


The Mummy: Bleached Edition

by Pandelion



Category: Bleach, The Mummy (1999)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Mummy Fusion, M/M, Movie rewrite, Mummies, ancient egypt except i rubbed off the serial numbers, as a heads up, damn it hito, i promise i love everyone in bleach tho, ichigo gets himself into trouble and then gets himself out, minor character deaths that follow movie canon, no harm ever came of reading a book amirite, rukia is the mummy, so many mummies, there are americans and everyone speaks modern english i will not accept criticism on this, this is all hito's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion
Summary: Las Noches - the fabled City of the Dead and home to untold treasures. Grimmjow could go the rest of his life never hearing that name again - not after actually finding the place and discovering it was full of nothing but sand and blood.But Fate has a way of laughing at his desires and three years later, he finds himself saddled with a sheltered librarian and the sheltered librarian's idiot brother, playing tour guide to one of his least favorite places.Mummy AU where it’s the movie, only with Bleach characters.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	The Mummy: Bleached Edition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sayhitoforever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayhitoforever/gifts).



> First and foremost, this is a (slightly early) Christmas present for sayhitoforever, who was...shall we say, _instrumental_ in making this fic happen. I hope you enjoy this overgrown gift, hito! <3
> 
> I wrote this stupid thing in a three week haze, so I very much hope the writing quality is enjoyable enough, since I was nearly sick of it by the time I finished. A big thank you to the Grimmichi discord server for putting up with three weeks of me whining about just about every aspect of both the movie and this fic and encouraging me to keep going; this thing wouldn't exist without you guys. <3
> 
> I cannot claim any credit for the plot, nor for 99% of the dialogue included in this fic, as both are taken from The Mummy. Any mistakes are my own.
> 
> Also! The lovely Pacouro made an [equally lovely piece of art](https://twitter.com/pacouro/status/1340751133296345088?s=20) for the fic while it was still in progress! Please go give it some love, too!

_ Las Noches, three years ago _

Grimmjow watches Starrk run away, a little dismayed at how unsurprised he feels. Not that he really blames the guy, when it comes down to it. The whole company had pretty effectively mutinied to get Starrk to let them march out of the Dangai and halfway into Hueco Mundo just to find this damn place and Starrk had never been the sort of commander that was good at dealing with a mob mentality. Nor did he deal well with the desert.

“Looks like you just got promoted,” Luppi says and Grimmjow glances at him.

It’s hard to resist the urge to thank him for stating the obvious, but Grimmjow manages it. He promises himself a beer the next time he passes through a town that has a bar. Maybe he’ll even shell out for the fancy imported stuff.

He sighs and lifts his gun again, turns to face the oncoming army. Figures that this place would come with a horde of horsemen waving swords.

“Mantener su posiciónes!” he bellows and rifle muzzles waver in an unsteady line down the crumbled wall. “Steady!”

Luppi lifts his gun, as well, squinting down the sight.

“You’re with me on this one, right?” Grimmjow asks, low. Bad enough to lose the commanding officer, he’d rather not lose one of the few other constants in this hellhole.

“Your strength gives me strength, my friend,” Luppi says and Grimmjow fights the urge to swing his rifle around and engage in a bit of friendly fire that isn’t. It’s a familiar feeling and he settles into it like an old jacket; he’s long since made his peace with the homicidal urges that crop up frequently around Luppi.

“Steady!” he calls out again. The riders are drawing closer, the whole of them a dark line under the dust cloud raised by hundreds of hooves.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Luppi shake his head, then drop his rifle and turn to follow Starrk. Grimmjow turns his head to watch, a little incredulous but again, mostly unsurprised. Oh, well.

He faces front. No one’s fired prematurely, which is honestly something of a surprise. Though maybe a garrison that’s cohesive enough to collectively chase the rumor of treasure is cohesive enough to follow orders.

Yeah, that didn’t make sense even to him. Whatever.

The riders are close enough that Grimmjow can make out individual riders.

“Fire!”

The first few volleys go well, shots ringing out, enemy soldiers falling, shouts and screams and that weird ululating call that makes the hair stand up on the back of Grimmjow’s neck. Then they lose the wall, falling back to the more intact section of ruins as the riders spill through their line, and Grimmjow’s gun is knocked out of his hands by the flat of a blade.   
  
He pulls his pistols instead, covers his own ass as he retreats to a section he thinks had actual buildings and doors, things that would block bullets and swords. Around him, the company is mostly in retreat, fighting back as they go, but mostly getting run into the sand.

Luppi appears again - apparently he hadn’t gone far, just tried to hide away from the action - and Grimmjow waves one of his pistols at him. “Run!” he yells and Luppi doesn’t waste time asking dumb questions.

Except then Luppi finds a door and literally shuts it in Girmmjow’s face.

Grimmjow thinks maybe he’d reward himself with  _ two _ beers for doing everyone a favor and actually killing Luppi.

The doorway makes a shelter for all of three seconds before they find him and he’s chased out by the  _ ra-tat tat tat _ of rifle fire.

Chunks of masonry and columns provide some shelter from his pursuers and Grimmjow slip-slides through the sand, dodging bullets and blades until he makes a wrong turn and finds himself in the shadow of some statue - probably a god or a king or both - and there are suddenly no more hiding places, no convenient door to duck into.

Hoofbeats behind him and he turns to face the riders because he doesn’t want to die, but he’ll be damned if he cowers from death when it comes for him.

Only it doesn’t.

The horses panic, suddenly, the whites of their eyes showing, ears pinned back, teeth bared, heads tossing like they just saw a snake. Their riders are too distracted trying to control them to shoot Grimmjow and then the wind rises, howling like the dead, and the whole lot of them just...leave. Ride off like there’s something scarier than one foreign man among the sand and rock.

For a second, he doesn’t get it, but then there’s the eerie sound of jackals and hyenas and the sand starts  _ moving _ . Grimmjow signed up for traveling the world and shooting at whoever his superiors told him to shoot at. He did  _ not  _ sign up for mutinies and sand moving on its own and auditory hallucinations.

He books it out of the moving sand, yelping when one spray catches him in the ass. Sand moving at speed  _ stings _ . Just about when he finds solid footing and turns to look, though, the sand settles and the air is quiet again, aside from the distant sounds of shouts and gunfire.

Grimmjow gets the fuck out of there.

~*~

_ Seireitei, now _

The morning sun is slanting steeply through the eastern windows, sunbeams thick with dust, but it provides enough light for Ichigo to not bother lighting the lamps as he hauls an armful of books up the ladder. He balances them against the top rung, tilting his head to look at the titles as he picks them up and puts them away

“Let’s see. Sacred Stones. Sculpture and Aesthetics. Socrates. Sousuke, volume one, volume two, and...volume three. To - Tousen?” He scowls at the spine of the book. “What are you doing here?”

He twists on the ladder, looks behind him at the other bookshelf. The  _ T _ section is on this side, at least, but it still seems like too much work to climb down, flip the ladder around, then climb back up just for one book. He reaches out, trying to stretch just a little...farther…

“Ack!”

He grabs at the ladder with one hand and the two fingers that aren't needed to hold onto the book, and wobbles dangerously for a long moment before he manages to balance the thing on its two poles.Every little twitch sends the ladder leaning one way or another, though, and it’s a constant adjustment just to stay in place. Ichigo manages it for long enough to think maybe he can make this work, get himself leaned against a solid object and -

The ladder jerks, abruptly, leaning back in towards a bookcase -  _ Sousuke, volumes one, two and three _ \- and then the bookcase is also leaning away and oh. Oh no.

He rides the bookcase down, scrambles off it once it’s settled, watching in mounting horror as the other shelves fall down, one after the other, in a circular domino effect. Glass shatters - probably some of Dr. Urahara’s specimen jars or maybe a couple pieces of pottery that were displayed on the shelves - and he winces. He’s going to be in so much trouble.

As if on cue, Dr. Urahara comes through the door just as the last bookshelf settles against its fallen fellows in a puff of dust.

“What - how - I - Oh, look at this!” He bends to pick up something - Ichigo thinks it’s the remains of one of those specimen jars. Then he turns and sees Ichigo and yep. Ichigo’s dead.

“Sons of the Five!” Dr. Urahara groans, walking over, specimen jar in one hand, his usual fan in the other. Both are waved around as he rants. “Give me frogs! Flies! Locusts! Anything but you! Compared to you, the other plagues were a  _ joy _ !”

“Sorry,” Ichigo says, tucking his hands - and the book he’s still holding, damn  _ Tousen  _ \- behind his back. “It was an accident?”

“My dear boy,” Dr. Urahara says, patronizing and dramatic in all the ways Ichigo has learned to dread. “When Kenpachi destroyed the Soukyoku,  _ that _ was an accident.  _ You _ are a catastrophe!” He sighs, looking mournfully around the destroyed library again. “Why do I even put up with you?”

Ichigo blinks, then frowns. Okay, sure, it’s his fault for wrecking the library, but really. “Well, for one, I can read and write ancient Hollow,” he says. “And I can decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic.  _ And _ , I’m the only one in a thousand miles that can properly code and catalogue this library!”

Dr. Urahara waves all that away with his fan. “I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons,” he says, apparently weary of all of this. “God rest their souls.”

Ichigo’s grip on the book tightens, but he doesn’t say anything to that, because really, it’s true. The Bembridge Scholars might be willing to consider him because he’s male and educated, but as beloved as his parents had been by certain members of the archaeological society, they’d been thought utterly raving mad by others. All his skills and capabilities were seen through that lens, for better or for worse. In the case of his dreamt-of future in archaeology, it tended to be for worse.

As if he needed another reminder after the letter that had arrived yesterday.

Another sigh brings him back to the present as Dr. Urahara shakes his head. “Just. Clean this up. I don’t care how you do it or how long it takes, just. Clean it up.” He leaves before Ichigo can say anything more, shaking his head and muttering to himself as he goes.

Ichigo doesn’t get long to dwell on that, though, as a clanging noise from the artifacts hall draws his attention. He frowns; he’d been the only one in this section of the building this morning, there shouldn’t have been anyone else around, let alone someone banging around near the mummies.

“Hello?” he calls as he enters the hall, looking around. Torch-bearers, statues of Hikifune and Oetsu, several closed sarcophagi...everything looks normal so far.

There’s no answer and he ventures further, a little weirded out. Noises in the artifact hall usually mean a new artifact being brought in or an old one being moved to a new display room, but none of the usual contraptions used for those purposes can be seen.

“Tanaka? Inabi? Bob?”

No one answers, but as Ichigo rounds another bust of Hikifune, he sees one of the sarcophagi has been opened, the lid pushed off and resting on the floor at an angle. They don’t open the sarcophagi unless the mummies inside are being studied and he’s nearly certain that all of the sarcophagi had been closed last night before he went home.

Another noise comes from the open sarcophagus, though, and Ichigo grabs a torch, holding it in front of him defensively as he approaches. “He-hello?”

He’s about to look over the edge of the sarcophagus when the mummy inside sits up abruptly, barely a foot away from his face, and he shrieks and nearly throws the torch at it. The desiccated corpse wobbles, grotesque and entirely too animated, as if laughing at him.

Then actual laughter rings out from the sarcophagus. Familiar laughter.

“Have you no respect for the dead?!” Ichigo hisses, stepping forward to glare down at Kon, who has an arm wrapped around the mummy, holding it up as he cackles.

“Of course I do!” Kon says, sitting up and shifting his arm to around the mummy’s shoulders. “But sometimes? I’d rather like to join them.”

Ichigo huffs and sticks the torch into a holder at the corner of the sarcophagus, coming back over to try and detach Kon from the very old, very fragile, corpse. “Well, I wish you would do it before you ruin my career the way you’ve ruined yours,” he says, sharp. Bad enough to have to live under his parents’ shadows, he doesn’t need his idiot brother casting further aspersions on his goals. “Now get out.”

Kon wiggles his fingers in a mournful farewell to the mummy, but lets Ichigo ease it back down into the sarcophagus before getting up to clamber out. He’s wobbly and Ichigo makes a face when he smells sour beer. Trust his brother to wander into the museum drunk and pass out in a sarcophagus.

“I will have you know, my dear, sweet brother,” Kon says. “My career is currently on a high note.”

Ichigo very nearly rolls his eyes, but really, this is just the cherry on top of a not very good morning and he slumps, steps back until he can sit at the feet of a statue of Oetsu. “High note. Right. Kon, c’mon, I’m really not in the mood for this. It’s been a very stressful morning. I made a bit of a mess in the library - “ Understatement. “ - and the Bembridge Scholars have rejected my application again. Not enough field experience, apparently.”

Kon’s face does something complicated before settling into a familiar arrangement of sympathy and regret. Ichigo hates that expression.

“Well, you’ll always have me, old chap,” Kon says after a moment and they’re so bad at this, at real emotions and sharing those sides of themselves. Ichigo rubs a hand over the back of his neck as Kon fidgets a little.

“Oh!” Kon says, lighting up. “I almost forgot. This will cheer you up!” He turns to bend into the sarcophagus again, rummaging around next to the mummy, and Ichigo sighs.

“Not another worthless trinket, Kon,” he says. “If I have to take one more piece of junk to the curator - ” Kon turns around, something in hand, and sits himself down next to Ichigo, holding whatever it is out for him to look at. “Oh. Where did you get this?” he asks, frowning a little as he takes the thing.

It looks like a puzzle box or a lady’s jewelry box, octagonal and about two inches deep, made of something like bronze. The surface is absolutely covered in hieroglyphics and hieratic, an interesting mix that Ichigo immediately starts trying to decipher. There are also a number of little levers that move when he presses at them. It’s very much not the same sort of thing that Kon usually brings him.

“Ah, uh, at a dig,” Kon says, a little vague. “Down in the Rukongai.” Ichigo will eat his boot if that’s anywhere close to the truth, but Kon  _ does _ tend to have a hand in a number of archaeological digs, so it’s plausible enough that Ichigo lets it go. “Well? Did I find something? Please, tell me I found something.”

If Ichigo presses on this lever and that one, then these two at the same time… The top of the box pops open into eight petals of jagged, triangular metal, revealing a tightly folded piece of parchment inside. They both stare at it for a moment.

“Kon?” Ichigo says, slow. “I think you found something.”

~*~

“Look. The cartouche there?” Ichigo says as Dr. Urahara opens the map. “It’s the official royal seal of Miyako the First, I’m sure of it.”

“Perhaps,” Dr. Urahara says, slow, reaching for his magnifier.

“Two questions,” Kon interrupts. “Who the hell was Miyako the First and was he rich?”

Ichigo grins at him. “She was the second king of the 19th dynasty and said to be the wealthiest god-king of them all.”

“Good. Good. I like this lady,” Kon says, so easily placated by thoughts of treasure and wealth. “I like her very much.”

“I’ve already dated the map,” Ichigo continues to Dr. Urahara. “It’s almost 3,000 years old. And if you look at the hieratic just here...well. It’s Las Noches.”

Dr. Urahara sets down both the map and the magnifier. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “We’re scholars, not treasure hunters. Las Noches is a  _ myth,  _ told by ancient storytellers to amuse foreign tourists. It’s not  _ real _ .”

“Yes, yes, I know all the blather about the city being protected by the curse of a mummy and all that nonsense,” Ichigo says, waving away the superstitions that he had no time for. The world was solid and tangible and unless one of those so-called curses came up and poked him, he was going to keep on not believing in them. “But my research has led me to believe that the city itself may have actually existed.”

“This is  _ the _ Las Noches we’re talking about?” Kon asks.

“Yes. The City of the Dead,” Ichigo says, just to make sure they were all on the same page. “Where the earliest god-kings were said to have hidden the wealth of Hueco Mundo.”

“In a big underground treasure chamber,” Kon continued, clearly well-acquainted with the rumors of gold and riches. A derisive snort from Dr. Urahara makes Kon wave a hand at him. “Oh, come on, everyone knows this story. The entire necropolis was rigged to sink into the sand at the god-king’s command and the whole place would disappear beneath the sand dunes, taking the treasure with it.”

“As the Americans would say,” Dr. Urahara says, holding the map up closer to his lamp. “It’s all fairy tales and hokum - oh, oh dear me. Look at that!”

Both Kon and Ichigo yelp and round the desk as the map flutters to the ground, burning merrily. It’s quick work to stamp out the flame, but the damage is done.

“You’ve burnt it!” Kon says. “You’ve burned off the part with the lost city!”

“It’s for the best, I’m sure,” Dr. Urahara says, not seeming too terribly bothered about the loss as he reaches up to adjust the hat he insists on wearing, even inside. “Many men have wasted their lives in the foolish pursuit of Las Noches. No one’s ever found it. Most have never returned.”

He lets them take the map with them, though, and Ichigo carefully folds it back up, tucking it into his pocket. Kon walks with him as they leave the curator's office, rambling about the lost opportunity to find the treasure of a lifetime right up until they reach a hallway with no one in it.

“Ah, Ichigo,” he says, fingers curling briefly at Ichigo’s elbow. “About the map…”

~*~

The prison is loud and busy, the warden a tall, heavy-set man that seems perfectly at home in the chaos. “Come, come,” he says. “Welcome to Seireitei Prison, my humble home.”

Ichigo takes a breath, regrets it, and follows the man into the prison, Kon a step behind him. He shoots a look at his brother. “You told me that you got it on a dig down in the Rukongai,” he hisses.

Kon makes a face, shrugs his shoulders. “I was...mistaken,” he hedges.

Ichigo  _ knew  _ it. “You lied.”

He gets an eyeroll in response. “I lie to everybody, Ichigo, what makes you so special?”

“I’m your brother!”

“Well, that just makes you more gullible,” Kon says blithely.

“Kon! You stole it from a drunk at the local izakaya!”

“Picked his pocket, actually,” Kon says, reaching for Ichigo’s elbow. “So I don’t think this is really a very good idea, all things considered.”

Ichigo pulls out of the grip. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He speeds up a bit to catch up with the warden. “What exactly is this man in prison for?”

The warden shrugs. “That, I do not know. But when I heard you were coming, I asked him that myself.” He calls the guards.

“And...what did he say?” Ichigo prompts.

“He said he was just looking for a good time,” the warden replies as the door opens and guards haul a struggling, disheveled man through to the outdoor cell, pushing him against the bars and driving a stick into the backs of his knees to drop him down to the ground. Ichigo grimaces.

“ _ This _ is the man you stole it from?” Ichigo asks Kon, a bit incredulous. It’s one thing to know about Kon’s extracurricular activities and another entirely to have them presented in the form of disheveled men who clearly disagree with being put in prison. Much less a disheveled man with bright blue hair that matches his eyes.

“Ah, well, yes, exactly,” Kon says, suddenly a lot more fidgety, turning a bit as if trying to hide his face. “So, really, why don’t we just go find some lunch or something, I could go for - ”

“Who are you?” the prisoner interrupts, eyes flicking from Ichigo to Kon and back. “And who’s the floozy?”

“Floozy?” Ichigo echoes. “What - “

“I - I’m just a, a local missionary sort of chap,” Kon blusters, apparently having decided deceit to be the better part of valor. “Spreading the good word and all, you know. And this is my brother, Ichigo.”

Ichigo can’t quite manage a greeting, but he nods at the scruffy prisoner as politely as he can manage. This man is probably their best bet to finding Las Noches, after all, no use alienating him right off the bat. Even if he  _ had  _ called Ichigo a floozy.

The man looks him up and down and doesn’t seem too impressed. “Oh, well. Guess he’s not a total loss.”

“Excuse me,” Ichigo starts, indignant, but he’s interrupted by the warden shouting across the courtyard.

“Sorry, excuse me for a moment,” the warden says before striding off to deal with whatever’s happened.

“Ask him about the box,” Kon mutters before Ichigo can get his mind back on track to being offended at being dismissed so easily.

“What - oh, right. Yeah. Um, we found your… Excuse me.”

The prisoner slowly looks back at him, clearly still nowhere near impressed at the difference in their positions. Ichigo sets his jaw and steps closer, just a little bit.

“We found your puzzle box,” he says. “And we’ve come to ask you about it.”

For a second, the prisoner just looks at him, eternally unimpressed and looking like he thinks Ichigo is ten kinds of idiot. “No.”

“...No.”

"No,” The prisoner says, slow. Ichigo wants to reach in and slap him. “You came to ask me about Las Noches.”

“Shh!” Kon says, harsh. “Not so loud!” The prisoner just rolls his eyes at him.

“How do you know the box pertains to Las Noches?” Ichigo asks, curious despite himself. The map had still been inside the box, after all, it clearly hadn’t been opened before Ichigo got his hands on it.

“Because that’s where I was when I found it. I was there,” the prisoner says and Ichigo feels about ten kinds of idiot at that because that’s the obvious conclusion. And then he's just excited, because this man has  _ been _ to Las Noches.

“How do we know that’s not a whole lot of bull shit?” Kon asks, leaning in closer, because he actually is ten kinds of idiot. Ichigo’s too busy trying to work through the fact that he’s meeting someone that’s been to Las Noches, who went there and came back, clearly alive, and managed to bring a  _ map _ back with him, whether he knew it or not. It bodes well for the effort of finding it himself.

The prisoner doesn’t answer Kon’s question, though, just frowns at him for a second. “Do I know you?”

Kon’s quick to deny it, but the prisoner punches him anyway, a short, sharp motion that lays Kon out on the ground before the guards can move forward to hit the prisoner with the batons they carry. Ichigo makes a face, stepping over Kon’s prone form to get closer to the prisoner.

“You were actually  _ at _ Las Noches?” he asks and the prisoner eyes him, mouth curling slowly into a grin that Ichigo’s not sure he likes the looks of.

“Yeah, I was there.”

“You swear?”

“Every damn day,” the prisoner says, clearly amused with himself.

“No, not that, I meant - “

“I know what you meant,” the prisoner interrupts, waving one hand. “Yeah, I was there. Miyako’s place. City of the Dead.”

If it’s true… “Could you...could you tell  _ me _ how to get there?” he asks and maybe it’s a longshot, asking a prisoner for help finding a fabled city of treasure, but it’s the best shot he’s probably going to get. The prisoner’s eyes go wide, like he hadn’t expected that question from him, but any reply is cut short by a flurry of shouting, the warden’s voice most prominent. They both look to the side, but the warden doesn’t come back and the guards behind the prisoner don’t move. This must be a common occurrence.

“You want to know how to get there?” the prisoner asks after a moment. Ichigo nods, leaning in. “You  _ really  _ want to know?”

“Yes,” Ichigo says, almost hisses it. They’re close enough for him to see dark lines under the unshaved scruff, a tattoo of some sort curving along the man’s jaw. “I really do.”

The prisoner wiggles a finger, gesturing Ichigo closer and Ichigo leans in. “Wha - mmph!” Fingers tight against his jaw, a thumb digging into his cheek, chapped lips pressed against his own, the slight prickle of scruff against his own smooth skin. He has just long enough to register that it’s a  _ kiss _ \- squashed and awkward, but still a  _ kiss _ \- before the guy is pulling away.

“Then get me the hell out of here!”

The guards haul the man back before Ichigo can come up with a response to that demand, batons out as the man struggles against them. He’s pulled through the door and back into the depths of the prison without too much trouble, though, leaving Ichigo somewhat dumbstruck, with Kon still groaning faintly behind him.

He turns to the warden, who has finally reappeared. “What - where are they taking him?”

“To be hanged,” the warden says, with evident satisfaction. “Apparently, he had a  _ very _ good time.”

Half an hour later, Ichigo finds himself halfway up the building, sitting next to the warden - his name is Omaeda and apparently, running prisons is a family profession - watching two guards lead the prisoner up onto the hanging block, the population of the prison pressed against the rails to watch, catcalling and jeering. Hangings are something of a spectator sport, it turns out.

Ichigo doesn’t really have a whole lot of attachment to the prisoner - he’d been rude and rough and all around not someone Ichigo had ever thought to keep company with - but he’s also Ichigo’s best lead on finding Las Noches without the map. Whether or not the man actually meant it, that he’d guide Ichigo to Las Noches if Ichigo could save him from the noose...well, that's a bridge to cross after he’s managed to save the man.

The kiss plays absolutely no part in his decision.

“I’ll give you one hundred bucks to let him go,” he says quickly to Omaeda.

“I would  _ pay  _ one hundred bucks to see him hang,” Omaeda retorts, looking bored. Ichigo wonders if people try to bribe him for their lives on a regular basis.

“Two! Two hundred dollars!” It would be money well spent, if Ichigo manages to get to Las Noches.

Omaeda doesn’t even twitch. “Proceed!”

Ichigo can’t hear what’s happening on the hanging block, but can guess when Omaeda calls out, “You idiot! Of course we don’t let him go!”

The guard slaps the prisoner’s head and Ichigo has a sudden vision of the man hanging from the rope, dead, and all of Ichigo’s dreams dead with him.

“Five hundred dollars!” he says, quick.

Omaeda throws up a hand, turning to him, eyes suddenly lit with greed. “And what else?” he asks, his other hand sliding over to squeeze Ichigo’s knee. “I am a very lonely man.”

Ichigo doesn’t even think, just smacks Omaeda’s hand hard enough to make him yelp. Around them, the prisoners laugh, clearly amused at their warden being so soundly rejected. Omaeda flushes and shouts something down at the hanging block and Ichigo has a second to half regret his automatic actions before the panel opens and the prisoner drops down into the open space below.

“Ah-ha, his neck did not break,” Omaeda says, pleased. “Now we must watch him strangle to death.”

Ichigo watches the prisoner struggle at the end of the rope, aghast, then plays the only card he can think of that might work. “He knows the location of Las Noches,” he says, turning to Omaeda.

The words are intriguing to Omaeda, Ichigo can see that. “You lie,” he says, but he sounds curious.

“I would never!” Ichigo lies. He absolutely would, if he needed to, but in this case, at least, he’s not lying. Hopefully.

Omaeda squints a little. “You’re saying that this filthy, godless son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead?” he asks, waving a hand at the prisoner.

“Yes!” Ichigo says. “And - and if you cut him down, we’ll give you...ten percent!”

Omaeda almost doesn’t take the bait, but then he says, “Fifty percent,” and Ichigo knows he has him. It’s a quick haggle until Ichigo pins him on twenty-five percent, which is twenty-five percent more than Ichigo plans to bring back - he’s a scholar, not a treasure hunter, unlike Kon - but, again. Worth it if he can actually find Las Noches.

The warden groans, but waves at the guards. “Cut him down!” he calls and Ichigo lets his shoulders relax for the first time in an hour as he watches them obey, the prisoner dropping to the dusty ground in a dazed heap.

Las Noches, here he comes.

~*~

Two days later, Ichigo checks his watch worriedly as the port bustles around him. “Do you really think he’s going to show up?”

They’d had a chance to talk to the prisoner before leaving the prison, Kon nursing a bruised jaw and Ichigo riding the high of a successful rescue. Plans had been made to charter a barge up river that could take them most of the way. They would meet on the docks at ten in the morning, two days from then. They’d even gotten a name for their new partner: Grimmjow Jaegerjacques.

Ten o’clock had come and gone almost ten minutes ago, but Mr. Jaegerjacques had yet to show up.

“Knowing my luck?” Kon asks. The bruise on his jaw has faded somewhat, but he’s as energetic as ever, excited to be going on a treasure hunt. “Undoubtedly. He may be a cowboy, but I know the breed. His word is his word.”

Ichigo huffs, looking around. Kon had made him carry the luggage and his arms are sore from whatever bricks or metal ingots Kon had packed. “Well, personally, I think he’s filthy, rude, and a complete scoundrel. I don’t like him at all.”

“Anybody I know?” a voice asks behind them and Ichigo whirls around, cheeks already warm with embarrassment at having been caught talking poorly about someone.

Except the person who spoke isn’t Mr. Jaegerjacques. Or. Well. It  _ is _ , only he’s not scruffy anymore. The long, tangled blue hair has been trimmed, re-dyed, styled back in something that’s almost… It’s a look, is all Ichigo is saying, eyes fixed briefly on the strands that fall forward over the man’s face. Dressed in proper clothes, clean shaven and much less dirty than when Ichigo last saw him, he could almost pass for a gentleman. The lines of what turns out to be a tattoo of some sort of bone along his jaw (a feline mandible, Ichigo thinks distantly, though not as hefty as a lion’s) belies the gentlemanly appearance, though, making him more...dashing.

And his eyes are much more striking when they’re not half-hidden behind matted locks of hair.

It’s honestly kind of terrible and Ichigo wishes he had the words to voice it, but his voice seems to have abandoned him.

Kon isn’t struck dumb by the transformation, at least. “Smashing day for the start of an adventure, eh, Jaegerjacques?” he asks, reaching to shake Mr. Jaegerjacques’ hand.

Mr. Jaegerjacques looks at him, clearly unused to Kon’s particular brand of enthusiasm. “Yeah. Smashing.” He lets go of Kon’s hand, pointedly checks his jacket pocket for a wallet.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t steal from a partner, partner,” Kon deflects. It’s probably yet another lie - Ichigo wouldn’t put it past his brother to steal from  _ him _ , if he thought he could profit from it - but Mr. Jaegerjacques just grins.

“Right. No hard feelings about that punch, yeah?”

“Happens all the time,” Kon admits cheerfully.

Ichigo finds his voice again, finally. “Mr. Jaegerjacques,” he says, drawing their attention. “Can you honestly guarantee me that this isn’t some kind of...of bullshit goose chase?” In the corner of his eye, Ichigo can see Kon’s head whip around to look at him, eyes wide, and he flushes a little, but keeps going. “Because if so, I’m warning you - “   
  
“You’re  _ warning _ me?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks, eyes wide. He leans in a little and Ichigo is made very aware of the several inches difference in their heights and how much broader Mr. Jaegerjacques’ shoulders are than his own. “Look. Let me put it this way. My whole damn garrison believed in this so much, they mutinied en masse and marched halfway across the desert and into Hueco Mundo to find that city. And when we got there, all we found was sand and blood.” He pauses for a second, blue eyes intent on Ichigo’s, then he straightens up. “Let me get your bags.”

He grabs their bags - having no apparent difficulty with Kon’s ridiculous packing - and heads up the gangplank. Ichigo and Kon turn to watch him go. The clothes fit him rather well, Ichigo realizes. Not quite tailored, but definitely well-fitting.

“Yes,” Kon drawls thoughtfully. “You’re right. Filthy, rude, a complete scoundrel. Nothing to like there at all.”

Ichigo blushes hot and pouches Kon in the shoulder.

Further punishment is interrupted by another familiar voice and Ichigo turns to scowl at the warden. “What are  _ you _ doing here?”

“Protecting my investment,” Omaeda says, hands full of luggage as he follows Mr. Jaegerjacques up the gangplank. “Thank you very much.”

~*~

“Quit playin’ with your glasses and cut the deck, Szayel,” one of the other Americans is saying as Grimmjow steps out on deck. Piano is playing in the background and there’s a poker game going on at the middle table. Three men he’s not familiar with beyond passing in the hall earlier and Kon, who he’s become more familiar with over the last day than he’d ever really wanted to be.

“Without my glasses, I can’t see the deck to cut it, now can I,” Szayel says, taking his time in wiping off the lenses and not at all bothered by the game being held up.

The door shuts behind Grimmjow with a bang and Kon turns to look. “Oh, Jaegerjacques, come sit down. We could use another player.”

Grimmjow considers the tablet and the chips, the bills and coins spread out between the players. “I only gamble with my life,” he says. “Never my money.”

“Never?” one of the men asks, lifting an eyebrow at him as Szayel finally cuts the deck. “So you wouldn’t take, say, a bet for five hundred dollars that we get to Las Noches before you?”

“You’re looking for Las Noches?” 

“Damn straight we are,” the third man says as the cards are dealt out.

“Hm. And who says we are?” Grimmjow asks, neutral, trying to figure out who leaked that information. He hadn’t talked to anyone since boarding the barge and as far as he knows, Ichigo hadn’t interacted with many of the other passengers. Which leaves - 

“He does,” the men chorus, three fingers pointed directly at Kon.

Yeah. That’s about what Grimmjow figured. Kon seems to feel Grimmjow’s withering look, because he turns to give him a sheepish look. Idiot.

“Well? How about it?”

Grimmjow glances around the table, but just because he’s aware that he’s easy to goad into competition doesn’t mean he’s any good at resisting the goad. He smiles slowly. “Alright, you’re on.” And on the off-chance they beat him, well. It’s a big desert.

“What makes you so confident, sir?” a man asks from another table. A local, Grimmjow thinks, or at least moreso than the three Americans, but educated, going by the accent.

“What makes you?” Grimmjow retorts, because he’s competitive, not stupid.

“We’ve got ourselves a man who’s been there,” one of the Tres Amigos says.

Kon, however,  _ is _ stupid. “Oh, what a coincidence, because Jae - “

Grimmjow has zero compunctions about swinging his weapons bag into Kon’s shoulder to shut him up. Kind of cathartic, actually. Hm.

He’s at least an idiot that’s quick on the uptake, though, as he barely glances at Grimmjow before fumbling into redirecting attention back to the game. Grimmjow has his doubts that it worked, but point for effort, he supposes. He adjusts his bag on his shoulder, then steps around the table, reaching to clap Kon’s shoulder.

“Gentlemen, we’ve got ourselves a wager. Good evening, Kon.” He emphasises the words with a tight squeeze that makes Kon wince. Yeah, definitely cathartic.

He finds Ichigo down the port side, sitting at a table near the rail and reading something or other. He jumps about a foot in the air when Grimmjow tosses his weapons bag onto the table and Grimmjow almost feels bad for startling him so bad, but it’s also funny as fuck.

“Sorry,” Grimmjow manages around a badly suppressed grin, because he can be nice sometimes. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“The only thing that scares me, Mr. Jaegerjacques, are your manners,” Ichigo manages with commendable dignity, considering he’d almost fallen out of his chair scarcely a minute prior.

Grimmjow glances at him, hands resting on the buckles of his bag. Kid’s got a bit of snark to him, for all that he comes across as a sheltered book brat. “Still, uh, still angry about that kiss, huh?”

Ichigo doesn’t miss a beat this time, barely looking up from the book he’s reopened. “Oh, well, if you call  _ that _ a kiss.”

Grimmjow’s jaw tightens enough that something jumps in his cheek. Sure, it hadn’t been his best work, but he’d been in prison, in shackles, working through literal bars. Standards hadn’t exactly been high. He flips open the buckles, flips out the weapons kit across the table.

Ichigo blinks over the top of his book. “Um. Did I miss something?” he asks, glancing at the pistols. “Are we...going into battle or something?”

“There’s something out there,” Grimmjow says, dropping into the other chair and picking up a pistol to start cleaning it. “Something underneath that sand.”

“Oh. Well. I’m hoping to find a certain artifact,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow has to give him a point for pursuing a conversation even when faced with something he’s clearly uncomfortable with. Ichigo pokes at one of the shotgun shells, tentative like he thinks it might explode, then picks up one of the ring-claws. “A book, actually. My brother thinks there’s treasure. What do you think is out there?”

“In a word? Evil. Most of the native tribes think Las Noches is cursed.” Grimmjow reaches out, taking the ring-claw from Ichigo before the guy hurts himself with it.

“I don’t believe in fairy tales and hokum, Mr. Jaegerjacques,” Ichigo says. “But...I do believe that one of the most famous books in history is buried out there. The Book of Hyosube. It contains within it all the secret incantations of the old kingdom.” He’s more animated, clearly excited about this book and the search for it, practically glowing. “It’s what first interested me in Hueco Mundo when I was a child and it’s why I came here. Sort of...sort of a life’s pursuit, I guess.”

It’s kind of attractive, that much enthusiasm. “And it makes no never-mind that it’s rumored to be made out of solid gold, I suppose?” Grimmjow asks, moving on to cleaning one of the shotguns.

Ichigo looks surprised at that, like he had never thought that Grimmjow might know what he was talking about, be able to respond. “You know your history,” he says.

“I know my treasure,” Grimmjow corrects, because he’s never been a history nerd and he’s not inclined to start now. Ichigo still looks pleased as all get out, though, and Grimmjow finds himself surprisingly okay with that. There are worse things in life than having a cute, sheltered bookworm smiling at him.

Ichigo’s face sobers a little and he ducks his head briefly before looking at Grimmjow again. “Um. Why...why  _ did  _ you kiss me back then?”

Grimmjow snorts. “I was about to be hanged,” he reminds him. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Something to get the guy’s attention, maybe give him an added incentive to save Grimmjow from the noose, a dying man’s last opportunity. He hadn’t really been thinking about it too much at the time.

This is apparently not good enough for Ichigo, who makes a face and this weird, frustrated little sound before standing and storming off. Grimmjow watches him go with raised eyebrows, not quite sure what he’s done wrong.

A sound from the opposite direction draws his attention, though, and he gets up, sliding a pistol into his vest holster. Just in case.

There’s someone hiding behind one of the trunks and he reaches in fast, hauls them out to pin against the nearby wall.

“My good friend! What a surprise!” Luppi stutters, eyes wide and looking just as squirrely as Grimmjow remembers him. “You’re alive! I was so worried”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my little pal Luppi,” Grimmjow drawls, reaching for his pistol. “I think I’ll kill you.” He still owes himself a couple of beers, after all.

Luppi splutters at that. “Th-think of my children!”

“You don’t have any children.”

“Someday I might!”

“Oh, shut up,” Grimmjow growls, jabbing the pistol into Luppi’s chest. “You’re the one leading the Amercians, then? I might have known. So, what’s the scam you’re running on them, huh? Take them out to the middle of the desert and then you leave them to rot?” Luppi isn’t worth the brainpower to harbor a proper grudge, but Grimmjow hasn’t forgotten. Or forgiven.

“Unfortunately, no,” Luppi says and he sounds legitimately put out by that. “These Americans are smart. They pay half up front and half when we get back to Seireitei, so this time I’ve gotta go the whole way.”

Grimmjow snorts. Smart, sure. Or maybe just not as gullible as Luppi’s usual marks. “Them’s the breaks, huh?”

Luppi nods, starting to relax since Grimmjow hasn’t actually shot him yet. “You never believed in Las Noches, Jaegerjacques,” he says. “Why are you going back?”

Grimmjow glances sideways to where Ichigo apparently didn’t storm off all the way back to his room, but has paused to pat the horses, and Luppi follows his look. Ichigo glances back, catching them looking, and huffs, disappearing into the bowels of the barge.

“You always did have more balls than brains,” Luppi says, which Grimmjow thinks is fucking rich, coming from him. Luppi laughs at his own joke and Grimmjow pastes on a smile, joins in. Slides an arm over Luppi’s shoulder and turns him towards the railing.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow says, still grinning. “Goodbye, Luppi.”

And then he grabs Luppi by the vest and heaves him over the railing, leaning over to watch him hit the water with no small amount of satisfaction.

He ignores the other people also peering over the edge as Luppi shouts, heading back to the table and his guns, but something glints in the lamplight and he frowns. Those wet footprints weren’t there before, he’s sure of it. And Luppi’s still in the river, there hasn’t even been enough time for someone to fish him out, so who left these?

He loads his pistols, wraps up the rest, and follows the footprints down into the barge, following Ichigo.

~*~

Ichigo’s doing his best to resume reading the book he’d been so invested in earlier - a history of the Bembridge scholars, as if knowing the minutiae that will help him get some sort of recognition - but he keeps rereading the same sentence over and over again.

_ George Bembridge, in eighteen sixty - _

He stands in front of the narrow bed for a few long seconds, staring at the page without seeing any of the words, then blindly reaches for the jacket laid there.

_ \- in eighteen-sixty-five, was - _

The jacket’s already on the hanger and he lifts it to the hook that’s mounted to the back of the door. He doesn’t notice when he misses the hook entirely.

_ \- in eighteen-sixty-five, was - _

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” he huffs when he realizes he’s been standing in the middle of the room for who knows how long. “It wasn’t that good of a kiss, anyway.”

He shuts the window harder than he needs to, goes to stand in front of the small vanity. There’s really not much to be done about his looks, he decides. He’s always had a kind of narrow face, his hair is the bane of at least five barbers, and he’s not a woman who could get away with makeup to enhance whatever attractive features he might possess.

And to round it off, he’s not even a proper gentleman or anything, he’s an assistant librarian.

“I hate everything,” he tells his reflection, planting his hands on the sink, then flinches when he accidentally knocks his book to the floor. He bends to pick it up.

When he stands up again, there is a man in black robes standing behind him in the mirror and he maybe shrieks just a little. Then he’s backed into the wall, a hand at his throat and a curved blade poking into his cheek and he’ll own the yelp that slips out at that point.

“Where is the map?” the man asks. His face is covered in tattoos and they’re somehow much more menacing than Mr. Jaegerjacques’ single tattoo.

Ichigo can’t exactly turn his head, not with the blade still poking his cheek, but he slides his eyes to the side, to the little table where his bag had been set, the map laid out so he could study it before bed.

“And the key? Where is the key?”

He pulls up a blank on that one. “The - the key? What key?”

“Ichigo!” Mr. Jaegerjacques shouts and something pounds at the door just before the man himself shoves through, two pistols already raised. He swings them around the room before landing on the robed intruder, who twists, bringing Ichigo with him as a human shield.

Mr. Jaegerjacques looks at Ichigo, down at the map, back to Ichigo, then his eyes cut to the window when it bangs open again, another robed man revealed on the other side, this one armed with pistols as well. Without Ichigo in the way, Mr. Jaegerjacques doesn’t hesitate to fire, leaving holes in the wall and causing the lamp to fall down onto the sofa, which promptly bursts into flame.

The robed man holding Ichigo hostage shuffles to the side, bringing him along, placing them right in front of the little table, which is also home to a lit candle. Suddenly determined to not be a damsel in distress, Ichigo grabs the candle, lifting it over his shoulder, flame-first, and jabbing it at where he guesses the robed man’s face to be. He must land the hit, because the man screams and lets go of him. He promptly ducks behind Mr. Jaegerjacques, who moves with him to the door, shooting again when the robed man in the window slides back into view.

They slip out of the room as soon as possible, Mr. Jaegerjacques covering their retreat with gunfire, and Ichigo’s halfway down the hall before he realizes he’d forgotten the map. “The map! The - I forgot the map!”

He starts to turn back, but Mr. Jaegerjacques catches his arm, pulls him down the hallway. “Relax,” he says. “I’m the map. It’s all up here.” He taps his head, but Ichigo really doesn’t make a practice out of trusting what people have in their heads; books are much more reliable and can’t change their minds.

“Oh, that’s comforting,” he manages, but he lets Mr. Jaegerjacques tow him down the hall. Behind him, he thinks he hears Kon call his name, but they’ve already turned a couple of corners and Ichigo can’t see him when he glances back.

The decks are chaos, the fire from his room spreading along ropes and cloth until it seems half the ship is up in flame. Mr. Jaegerjacques grabs his bag of weapons and shoves it at Ichigo, who barely gets a grip on it. “Here, hold this.”

The door is protected by a short entryway, but there is gunfire from around the corner and Mr. Jaegerjacques stands back, fingers moving over the gun - reloading, Ichigo thinks, though he doesn’t know much about firearms. It seems to take forever, regardless, and he watches holes appear in the wall with growing horror. They’re all right about head height and each one comes closer and closer and Mr. Jaegerjacques doesn’t seem to notice. At the last moment, Ichigo reaches out, yanking him a foot to the right, just before another hole appears where his head had been.

Mr. Jaegerjacques seems to have gotten the time he needed, though, because he glances at Ichigo, then pulls a second pistol out, and then they’re moving across the deck, shots being fired from all directions. Ichigo thinks it’s a minor miracle that neither of them are hit by the time they reach the railing.

“Can you swim?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks, nearly shouting over the din.

“Swim? Yes, I can swim when the occasion calls for it!” Ichigo says.

“Trust me. The occasion calls for it,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says and Ichigo doesn’t get a chance to protest before he’s being picked up and bodily lifted over the rail.

The water is cold when he hits it and Ichigo flails a bit trying to get back to the surface, spluttering. He starts moving away from the barge, then stops, treading water, because Mr. Jaegerjacques hadn’t followed him over the railing, despite being right there. He can’t see anything from where he is, between the angle and the fire, but he looks anyway, trying to find their guide or his brother or even the warden.

It takes a long minute before he sees Mr. Jaegerjacques jumping over the railing, followed a moment later by the warden. He doesn’t see Kon, but he just has to hope that his brother made it off, as well.

Mr. Jaegerjacques sees him and waves a hand towards the bank, so Ichigo starts swimming again. The water’s not as cold, now that he’s gotten a bit more used to it, but the night air is frigid when he finally gets to the shallows, stumbling up onto the bank. When he turns around, there are three people in the water behind him and he’s so relieved to see Kon that he nearly cries. Not that he’s telling his brother that. They join him, coughing and panting and thoroughly soaked.

“We’ve lost everything,” Ichigo says, looking back at the burning boat. “All of our tools, all the equipment! All our clothes.” That last one seems most important at the moment, given he’d been getting ready for bed when the robed men invaded and he’s dressed only in a loose sleep shirt and thin pants. Everyone else is fully dressed and he finds himself a bit annoyed at that.

Mr. Jaegerjacques looks like he has something to say about that, but then someone calls his name from the other side of the river and they all turn to look.

“Hey! Jaegerjacques! Looks to me like I’ve got all the horses!”

Which, yes, all of the crew and the rest of the passengers had gone to the other bank, along with the horses they’d managed to rescue and probably a fair bit of supplies.

Mr. Jaegerjacques walks a few steps back into the water. “Hey, Luppi! Looks to me like you’re on the wrong side of the river!” he bellows back.

After that, there’s nothing to do but make camp next to the river and wait for the dawn. This close to the equator, the nights aren't too bad this time of year, but it is still a miserable hour or two until they dry off enough to be able to try for some sleep.

Across the river, small pockets of light give away their fellow passengers doing the same.

The next morning, they set off by foot towards what Mr. Jaegerjacques promises is a local settlement where they can get breakfast, resupply, acquire camels, and find Ichigo some clothes that aren’t pajamas.

~*~

They find the encampment almost exactly where Grimmjow remembers it and he’s quietly relieved that they won’t have to go any further. The warden has been complaining since almost before they woke up about the lack of breakfast, lack of coffee, lack of horses or camels, lack of shade - if there is something to complain about, the whole party hears about it.

Now, though, they’ve bought a bit of breakfast, which has gone miles in cheering up the warden. The man is currently busying himself by getting rejected by a gaggle of locals, several of them shouting insults and admonishments at his approaches. This in turn cheers up Grimmjow.

Kon finally settles on a price for four camels - it’s outrageous and pure highway robbery, apparently, but Grimmjow isn’t in  _ that _ good of a mood and he’s this close to knocking Kon out and only getting three camels.

“Can’t believe the price of these fleabags,” Kon complains, reluctantly counting out bills and handing them to the seller. The man looks happy enough, so Grimmjow figures Kon did actually pay the price they’d settled on. He reaches out, taking the leads of two of the camels, leaving the other two to Kon.

“You probably could have gotten them for free,” Grimmjow says. “Dress your brother up in some silks, call him your sister, and give him to the guy.”

“Yes, yes. Awfully tempting, wasn’t it?” Kon agrees as they head back to where they’d dropped Ichigo off to find some actual clothes.

Ichigo is just coming out of the tent when they get there and Grimmjow only recognizes him because of his flame-bright hair. Gone are the loose sleep clothes he’d been wearing and in their place are… Well. He mentioned silks and if at least one of those fabrics isn’t silk, he’ll eat his boot.

The locals have dressed Ichigo in loose, flowing fabrics dyed in browns and blues that gather at the wrists and ankles, a rope belt cinched at his waist and a vest over the shirt. His hair has been brushed out, the messy spikes poking out from underneath a sheer veil that falls down over his shoulders, the facepiece secured by golden clasps. Even his shoes are new, sandals with straps securing them, the leather dark against fair skin. He comes closer and Grimmjow’s fairly sure there’s kohl smudged around his eyes, making them look almost golden instead of the brown they usually are.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow says to Kon, entirely too late and with the entirely wrong tone. “Awfully.”

One of the camels nodges him with a low sound and Grimmjow takes the distraction gratefully, patting at it. No need to keep staring at Ichigo, after all. They’re on a venture to find a book, not figure out if maybe Ichigo might want to get a drink sometime.

He gets the camels loaded up with their new supplies, food and water and bedrolls, and they leave after waiting out the hottest part of the day. No need to rush things and be dehydrated and burnt by the time they reach their destination. Five hundred bucks isn’t worth that much.

They ride single file, Grimmjow in the lead, Ichigo behind him, followed by Kon. Of the four of them, Grimmjow figures the one he’ll miss the least is the warden, so no harm leaving him in the back where it won’t matter as much if he falls behind.

It’s a two day ride from where they started, longer than it would have been if they’d been able to ride the boat all the way upriver as planned, but Grimmjow pushes them past sunset before letting them stop for the night and they mount up as early in the morning as they can manage.

The second day, he stops them at the hottest part of the day so he can catch a couple hours of sleep, then pushes them through the night. The others sleep as they ride, secure in their seats, and he stays awake to make sure they’re going the right direction. He ties their camels together in pairs, then connects the pairs by a longer lead, just to make sure they stay together. Kon and the warden ride together and Grimmjow keeps Ichigo close.

At one point in the night, Ichigo’s camel is scant inches from his own and the boy - young man, really, Grimmjow’s fairly sure that Ichigo’s older than he seems, that it’s just the veneer of inexperience and innocence that makes him seem so much younger than himself - leans sideways, his head resting briefly on Grimmjow’s shoulder.

For a long second, Grimmjow doesn’t do anything, too surprised by the warm weight and the soft puffs of sleep-slow breathing. Then, slow, he reaches to push Ichigo back into his seat properly, hand hovering until he’s sure Ichigo won’t just tip the other direction and fall out of the saddle.

The camel groans and he shushes it, but Ichigo doesn’t wake up. Grimmjow takes a breath, lets it out slow. This is getting a bit out of hand.

Shortly before dawn, he hears the whinny of a horse and he turns to look. At the top of a nearby ridge, he can make out a line of riders, seemingly looking down at them. He frowns, remembering a similar scene three years ago as he’d stumbled out of the ruins of Las Noches and into the desert.

They shouldn’t have come here, he thinks, but they’re too close to turn around. As much as he dreaded returning to Las Noches, he wasn’t some honorless vagrant who would renege mid-venture.

It’s not too much longer before they reach the place he had in mind. In the distance, he can see other riders, some on camels, some on horses, and makes a face. Looks like those horses came in handy for Luppi, if they’ve made such good time even with the disadvantage of having been on the wrong side of the river.

He wakes up Ichigo and the others and by the time they get within shouting distance, everyone’s awake and aware to varying degrees. Kon and the warden seem like they very much would like to go back to sleep, but Ichigo’s surprisingly bright and bushy-tailed.

“Good morning, my friend!” Luppi calls. Grimmjow doesn’t bother replying as he turns his camel and comes to a stop.

“What the hell we doin’?” one of the other Americans asks - Grimmjow thinks his name’s Yammy.

“Patience, my friend,” Luppi says.

“Remember our bet, Jaegerjacques,” another American calls. Nnoitra, if Grimmjow remembers correctly. Not Szayel, at least, since he’s not the one with glasses. “First one to the city, five hundred cash bucks.”

“Hundred of those bucks is yours if you help us win that bet,” Yammy says to Luppi.

“Oh, my pleasure,” Luppi says, clearly kissing ass.

Grimmjow lets himself roll his eyes at that. He doesn’t care about the bet, but he’s kind of annoyed at having to deal with these idiots at this time of day.

“Hey, Jaegerjacques,” Luppi continues. “Nice camel.”

When his prayer for divine intervention isn’t answered - just one lightning bolt, that’s all Grimmjow’s asking for here - he just looks out to the east and the sprawl of empty desert. It won’t remain empty for much longer, he knows.

“Get ready for it,” he says, low. Ichigo looks at him, confused.

“For what?”

“We’re about to be shown the way,” Grimmjow says, nodding out across the sand as the sun starts to rise properly.

As soon as the bottom curve of the sun separates from the sand, the desert starts to shimmer like a mirage, though it’s not hot enough yet to produce one. The air wavers and over the course of minutes, the familiar outcropping of rock slides into view.

“Will you look at that,” one of the Americans mutters. Grimmjow doesn’t bother looking to see which one.

“Can you believe it?”

“Las Noches.”

“Here we go again,” Grimmjow sighs. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe this will be an uneventful trip and they’ll find Ichigo’s book and a bit of treasure among the ruins. That’d be nice.

Nice has a habit of not happening to Grimmjow, is the thing.

The shimmer fades away and Luppi swats his crop at his own camel’s flank. Grimmjow’s a second behind, urging his camel into motion, and then everyone’s moving, surging towards the distant ruins.

The horses are fast at first, but they’re less certain on the sandy, rocky ground than the camels and their rocking gait quickly overtakes them. Grimmjow urges his camel faster, catching up to Luppi and swinging in close.

It turns out to not be the best idea, because Luppi has no compunction about turning the crop on him instead and Grimmjow finds himself blocking against hard, stinging slaps until he can reach through and grab Luppi’s vest. He can see the knowledge of what’s coming flash through Luppi’s eyes and Grimmjow grins as he pulls Luppi off of his camel.

“So long, Luppi,” he says.

Behind him, he hears Ichigo say, “And serves you right,” as he rides past Luppi and Grimmjow can’t help but grin.

Then it’s him and Ichigo in the lead with the others a good distance behind and even if Grimmjow doesn’t care about the five hundred bucks, it feels damn good to win. Only then Ichigo’s camel gets it into its mind to go even faster and Ichigo shoots him a surprised look as he pulls ahead. Kon cheers him on from behind and Grimmjow is content with second place as Ichigo rides into the ruins ahead of him.

~*~

The Americans and their retinue of hired help set up camp in the middle of the ruins, with easy access to several of the less damaged buildings. Grimmjow can’t fault them for that; they’re looking for treasure in general and they might as well cast a wide net for it. He passes one of their piles of supplies, though, and swipes a couple things, partly out of spite and partly because he sees something and thinks that Ichigo might like it.

Ichigo is more specific about where he wants to start looking for his book, though, and Grimmjow finds himself playing packmule as Ichigo mutters to himself while examining various pillars and statues that look pretty similar to Grimmjow. Finally, though, Ichigo finds a spot that is apparently satisfactory.

“That’s a statue of Oetsu,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow looks at where he’s pointing. He hadn’t been paying attention three years ago, not to details like which statue he’d almost died against, but it does look vaguely familiar. He eyes the sand at its base, wary of it jumping up for no reason again.

Oh yeah, this adventure is definitely going to end well.

“Its legs go deep underground,” Ichigo continues and Grimmjow refocuses, reaches to get the rope out of his pack. “According to the Bembridge scholars, that’s where we’ll find a secret compartment containing the golden Book of Hyosube.”

There’s a hole in the rock nearby that looks like it leads down into a buried room, so Grimmjow starts winding rope around a nearby pillar as an anchor point. He figures it’s stood there for thousands of years, a couple people rappelling off of it won’t make it budge.

“Kon, you’re meant to catch the sun with that,” Ichigo calls and Kon looks a bit sheepish as he stops trying to blind the warden with reflected light and sets up the metal disc properly.

“So, uh, what are these old mirrors for, anyway?” Grimmjow asks. Ichigo’s wrangling a mirror of his own, rubbing off as much of the dirt and grime as possible with a rag.

“Ancient mirror,” he says absently. “It’s an ancient Hollow trick. You’ll see.”

Grimmjow nods, feeling a bit lost for a moment. Ichigo and Kon seem much more at home in the ruins than he expected and even the warden doesn’t seem too out of place. It leaves him feeling at loose ends; he looks around and sees only sand and blood and death instead of the treasure and possibility that Ichigo sees.

So he watches Ichigo fuss with the mirror for another minute before pulling the toolkit out of his belt. “Here, uh, this is for, uh, for you,” he says, holding it out to Ichigo. “Go on. It’s something I borrowed off our American brethren, thought you might, might like it - need it, uh, y’know.”

Ichigo takes the toolkit, unrolling it. It’s nothing special, but Grimmjow knows enough about archaeology to know that a toolkit is important. And he hadn’t seen one in Ichigo’s gear, so he’d figured - well. It’s a stupid thing, really.

He nods at Ichigo -  _ so stupid _ \- and turns to go back to getting a line set up, almost running into the warden, who looks like he might be trying not to smile. “What are you looking at?” he snaps.

The warden lifts his hands, doesn’t say anything, but Grimmjow still feels like he’s being judged for something. He goes to the rope, checks that his knots are good, leans over to eyeball the distance down to the bottom of the hole. Should be good.

“Check for bugs,” the warden says. Grimmjow ignores him. “I hate bugs.”

When everything’s as secure as he can make it, Grimmjow gets a good grip and jumps down. It’s only about twenty or thirty feet and he’s got his feet on solid ground only a minute or so later, turning to look around the dark room.

There’s a lot of sand, which is understandable, given the hole in the roof. The sun doesn’t reach too far and neither does the torch that Grimmjow lights, but he can see shaped rock and metal frames, evidence of human activity. It’s definitely not a natural cave.

“It’s safe,” he calls up. “Come on down!”

There’s a muffled debate over who gets to go down next, which Ichigo wins by virtue of grabbing the rope and starting to lower himself down. Grimmjow watches him - sheltered librarians aren’t known for being particularly capable with physical activities - but his concern is for naught as Ichigo manages the whole way on his own. Kon and the warden follow, but Ichigo is already moving into the room, looking around in fascination.

“Do you realize,” he says, touching his fingertips to a nearby rock plinth. “We’re standing inside a room that no one has entered in over three thousand years?”

Grimmjow glances back up at the opening in the ceiling, doubtful, then reminds himself that this is Las Noches, which hasn’t even been officially discovered yet. It might actually be possible no one else has come down here since it was abandoned by the ancients.

Kon says something - Grimmjow doesn’t catch it, but assumes it’s stupid. He’s too busy watching Ichigo move from object to object until he finds another of the ancient mirrors.

“And then there was light,” Ichigo says, brushing off old cobwebs and tilting the mirror. It catches the sunlight, directs it across the room, and catches another mirror that’s positioned there. The light bounces from mirror to mirror, lighting up the whole room. It’s admittedly impressive.

“Neat trick,” Grimmjow allows. Definitely more useful than just having giant mirrors laying around.

Ichigo looks around now they can see more and his eyes go wide. “Oh my god, it’s a sah-net jer.”

“A what?” Grimmjow asks. He’s barely managed the basics of the local languages, he hasn’t bothered with anything older than a decade.

“A preparation room,” Ichigo says, like that explains anything.

“Preparation for what?”

“For entering the afterlife,” Ichigo clarifies, grinning at him.

“Mummies, my good sir,” Kon supplies. “This is where they made the mummies.”

Ah. That makes more sense. Grimmjow looks around again, as if the rocks and metal fixtures will suddenly have new significance with this knowledge. They still look weird and misshapen, but that’s probably more down to the passing of time than anything.

Kon lights a second torch off of Grimmjow’s and they start moving towards the doorway, where a passageway stretches out towards, presumably, the rest of the complex.

The corridor is carpeted in sand, cobwebs covering the walls. Grimmjow looks at them and has a moment of wondering whether the spiders that made them had actually managed to catch enough bugs to survive or if they’d all starved to death after thinking this was a good place to set up shop.

Halfway down the hall, there’s a skittering noise, a buzzing in the walls so loud that it seems right on top of them. They all spin, trying to find the source of the noise, but nothing shows and the sound fades after only a few seconds.

“What was that?” Kon asks, sounding freaked out.

Grimmjow’s maybe a little freaked out, too - he meant it when he said there was something out here - but like hell is he going to let on. “Sounded like...bugs,” he murmurs.

“He said bugs,” Ichigo relays to the others.

“What do you mean, bugs? I hate bugs,” the warden mutters with emphasis and Grimmjow smiles to himself. It’s the small things, really.

They keep moving and the corridors get darker the further they go until finally they duck through a doorway into another room. It doesn’t look like anything special until Ichigo says, “There. The legs of Oetsu.” 

Sure enough, there is a pair of legs against one wall. The ceiling cuts them off just above the knee and they’re at an angle, standing on a base that’s covered in hieroglyphics and other imagery.

“The secret compartment should be hidden somewhere inside here…”

As they approach, though, there’s what sounds like a jackal’s bark, then a low, groaning noise fills the air, accompanied by more of the skittering buzz. Again, they wave the torches at the darkness, but no source reveals itself. Grimmjow would think it just the wind, but they’re far enough in that they shouldn’t be hearing anything of the sort.

It’s bizarre enough that he hands his torch to Ichigo in order to have his hands free to draw his pistols and they all clump up against the base of the statue as a firm wall at their backs. Noises from the right draw their attention and Grimmjow edges towards the corner, both pistols cocked and ready.

He takes a breath and twists around the corner - Kon’s at his flank, he notices in the corner of his eye, a small pistol in hand as well, and that’s almost more terrifying than the creepy noises - only to come muzzle-to-muzzle with a half dozen other pistols.

Everyone shouts, wordless and surprised, but no one shoots.

“You scared the bajeezus out of us, Jaegerjacques,” Yammy says and Grimmjow’s mouth twists in something like a smile.

“Likewise.”

Szayel’s eyes slide past Grimmjow, his pistol lowering, and he frowns. “Hey. That’s my toolkit,” he says, taking a step towards Ichigo.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Grimmjow says, both pistols swinging around to point at the guy. Everyone else tenses, guns coming back up from where they’d started to relax. Kon’s nearly plastered against Grimmjow’s left arm and his gun is steady. It’s something Grimmjow reminds himself to think about later, when there aren’t other guns pointed at them.

“O-okay,” Szayel says, backpedaling into the safety of the group. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”

Everyone slowly lowers their guns when no other challenge is offered. Behind Grimmjow, Ichigo clears his throat. “Well. Have a nice day, gentlemen. We have a lot of work to be getting along with.”

“Push off,” the - Grimmjow isn’t actually sure who he is, the man who’d questioned him back on the boat about why they were confident in finding Las Noches. He thinks it’s the other group’s equivalent to Ichigo, a bookworm brought along to provide guidance and interpretation. “This is our dig site.”

“We got here first,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow blinks. He’s gotten used to Ichigo’s little spurts of temper or sass, but this is the first he’s seen of any ability to actually stand up for himself. Another thing to think about later.

The other group seems to take offense at that, as guns come back up, and Grimmjow and Kon are a fraction of a second behind.

“This here’s our statue, friend,” Nnoitra says, eyes steady on Grimmjow.

“I don’t see your name written on it, pal,” Grimmjow replies.

Luppi shrugs one shoulder. “Yes, well. There’s only four of you and - “ He checks real quick over his shoulder, like he thinks the rest of the group has vanished on him. “ - and fifteen of me. Your odds are not so great, Jaegerjacques.”

“I’ve had worse,” Grimmjow says. It has the benefit of being true, even.

“Yeah, me, too,” Kon says and Grimmjow has to look at him for that, because  _ really _ ? But Kon glances at him and nods a little and really, for a man who Grimmjow would have expected to be cowering in the back with the warden, Kon does seem awfully sure of himself with a gun in his hand. Grimmjow really needs to figure that out. But later.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Ichigo mutters. “Let’s be nice, children.” He moves past Grimmjow’s right arm, reaching for Nnoitra’s gun, and Grimmjow resists the urge to reach out, pull him back, out of harm’s way. But Nnoitra lets him push the muzzle down towards the ground and Ichigo keeps moving, bringing the guns all down from ready with gentle touches. “If we’re going to play together, we must learn to share.”

Then he looks at Grimmjow and Grimmjow’s a little embarrassed to admit he almost forgets who he’s aiming his pistols at. The veil is gone, but the kohl is still smudged around Ichigo’s eyes and, this close, he can see the flecks of gold in soft brown and it’s. It’s really distracting, is what it is.

“There are other places to dig,” Ichigo says, like it’s a code that Grimmjow’s meant to understand. The fingers that curl against his bicep are...are… They’re something.

He glances past Ichigo, but lowers his guns, flicking the safeties back on and holstering them. “Right,” he agrees, gives the other men as false a smile as he can manage. “Gentlemen.”

“Jaegerjacques,” Nnoitra says, even, tipping his head politely.

Kon and the warden holster their own guns - when had the warden drawn his gun? Grimmjow didn’t remember seeing him with it, either. - and they all follow Ichigo when he heads back towards the doorway, walking sideways to keep the other group in sight as long as possible.

“There was a crack,” Ichigo explains as they head down another corridor. “There’s something further down, below the statue. If we can find some stairs or something…”

They do indeed find some stairs or something, dark and steep and curving down into shadow, but if Grimmjow’s keeping track of which direction they’re heading correctly, then the room the stairs empty out into should be the one Ichigo is looking for.

Then it turns out Ichigo wants them to hack up through the rock of the ceiling to the base of the statue and Grimmjow thinks longingly of being back in Seireitei, back before he got into that brawl at the izakaya, before he got thrown in jail for assaulting an officer or some shit, before he met this ridiculous pair of brothers and their ridiculous wish to find Las Noches.

“According to these hieroglyphics,” Ichigo is saying, as Grimmjow and Kon swing mallets at the ceiling and try not to suffocate in the sand and dirt that rains down. “We’re underneath the statue. We should come up right between his legs.”

“When those damn Yanks go to sleep - no offense,” Kon says.

“None taken,” Grimmjow grunts, ducking out of the way of a stream of sand.

Kon continues almost before Grimmjow speaks, clearly not too worried about having possibly offended him. “We’ll dig our way up and steal that book right out from under them.”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes a little - nothing ever goes that easy - and takes the pickaxe out of Kon’s hand, trading it for the mallet he’d been using. He digs one end into the groove between two slabs and starts wiggling. “Are you sure we can find this secret compartment thing?”

“Oh, yes, if those beastly Americans haven’t beaten us to it,” Ichigo says. He’s pulled the little spade out of the toolkit, is using it to dig out some of the stuff between the rock. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Grimmjow repeats.

Kon looks around. “Hey, where’d our smelly little friend get to?”

Grimmjow glances around, but the warden’s nowhere in sight. He shrugs; not his problem if the guy wanders off and sets off some ancient booby trap. One less idiot to keep track of.

He hacks at the rock a little more before deciding that it’s not going to be moving anytime soon and giving up for a bit. Kon has been poking around the room already for several minutes by then, having clearly lost interest in the dirty work. Ichigo pokes at the ceiling for a minute or so longer, then sits down on the slab they’d been standing on with Grimmjow. 

“I’d like to examine the preparation room further,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow glances at him over the handkerchief he’s using to wipe the dust off his face. It’s not as hot down here as it would up on the surface, in the midday sun, but the exertion is warming.

“Yeah?” he asks, because he’s not a total jerk all the time and if Ichigo wants to talk to him, well. Grimmjow’s not sure he could do anything but talk back. “What’d your brother mean, anyway, that that’s where they make the mummies?”

Ichigo practically lights up, clearly excited to talk about something he’s interested in and, presumably, knowledgeable about. “Oh! Well. For starters, mummification wasn’t just a method of burial. The ancients believed that their bodies would pass into the afterlife when they died, so they went to great lengths to preserve them. Certain organs held particular significance and they were kept with the body, stored in canopic jars.”

Grimmjow’s heard of canopic jars from treasure hunters, artifacts that tend to be fairly common and fairly valuable. He hadn’t realized they were used to store organs. Kind of creepy, now that he thinks about it.

“Then there’s a whole process of embalming the body with oils and other mixtures to prevent you from decaying, and you’re wrapped up tight in linen bandages and buried in a sarcophagus, along with some of your possessions or even pets and servants,” Ichigo continues, sounding entirely too happy about something so gruesome.

Kon has moved on from poking around the room to hitting rocks with one of the tools like he’s swinging a golf club.

“So let me get this straight,” Grimmjow says, feeling a bit like he’s just had a whole volume of the encyclopedia dropped on his head. “They ripped out your guts and stuffed them in jars.”

“Oh, they’d take out your heart, too,” Ichigo says, matter-of-fact. “And do you know how they took out your brains?”

Grimmjow hadn’t been aware that mummification involved removing brains, so no. He shakes his head.

“Ichigo, I don’t think we need to know this,” Kon says, still swinging the mattock at rocks.

Ichigo ignores him, undeterred. “They take a sharp, red-hot poker, stick it up your nose…” He demonstrates with the pick he’s holding. “Scramble things about a bit and then rip it all out through your nostrils.”

Grimmjow grimaces and doesn’t quite manage to resist lifting a hand to his nose in sympathy several thousand years too late. “That’s gotta hurt.”

“It is called mummification,” Ichigo reminds him. “You’ll be dead when they do this.”

Grimmjow nods, slow, then looks at Kon. “For the record. If I don’t make it out of here, don’t put me down for mummification.”

“Likewise,” Kon agrees and swings the mattock again. He hits the ceiling this time and a huge chunk of it falls down right in front of Grimmjow and Ichigo, spilling dust and rubble in all directions. Grimmjow jerks back, one arm coming up to protect his face, and Ichigo does the same next to him.

The dust settles and they look at each other, look at the slab that’s almost literally dropped into their laps.

“Oh my god,” Ichigo says, coughing a little. “It’s a - a sarcophagus.” He and Grimmjow both look up at the cavity left in the ceiling. “Buried at the base of Oetsu. He must have been someone of great importance. Or…” He looks at Grimmjow. “Or he did something very bad.”

Kon goes to grab the torches, setting them up closer to the sarcophagus, while Ichigo turns to grab a brush out of his toolkit. The center panel is easily cleared of sand and rock.

“Well, who is it?” Kon asks, leaning in from the other side.

“She That Shall Not Be Named,” Ichigo reads out. Which, really, isn’t filling Grimmjow with confidence. Of the two options Ichigo had given, he’s thinking this is somewhat on the latter end. You don’t refuse to name people of great importance.

He blows at an indentation, clearing away the sand there. “This looks like some sort of lock,” he says.

“Well, whoever’s in here sure wasn’t getting out,” Kon says.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Grimmjow agrees. Bad enough the person - lady? Ichigo had said ‘she’ - was dead, but whoever had buried her had gone to the trouble of putting a lock on her coffin. “It’d take us a month to crack into this thing without the key.”

“A key?” Ichigo echoes, thoughtful. “A key… A key! That’s what he was talking about?”

Grimmjow shares a confused look with Kon. “Who - who was talking about what?”

“The man on the barge,” Ichigo says, turning to dig in the pack he’d brought with them. “The one with the hook who was looking for a - a key!” He’s got the little puzzle box in hand, fumbling with it until it opens, eight jagged triangles in a starburst.

“Hey, that’s mine,” Kon says and Grimmjow shoots him a look, because Kon had  _ stolen _ it from him in the first place.

Ichigo ignores them, reaching out to place the box in the lock, where it settles in perfectly, like - well. Like a key in the right lock. He looks very pleased about it, grinning at Grimmjow.

The moment is short-lived, though, as a scream echoes down the hallway behind them. The stairs had dropped them into this room, but there had been another hallway leading out into the complex. Grimmjow has a sinking feeling they’re about to figure out where the warden got to.

He grabs his pistols and heads for the hall, Ichigo right behind him. The screaming continues, getting louder, and a second later, the warden runs into view, hands grabbing at his face, shirt open and flapping. They rush towards him, but he runs through them, still screaming, and nothing appears to be chasing him. Grimmjow lowers his gun, confused, as they turn to watch the man run down the hall.

There are other halls and rooms branching off, but the warden ignores them, running straight until he hits the wall at the end at full tilt, bouncing back onto the ground and going still and quiet.

For a long moment, no one moves, then Grimmjow holsters his gun and goes to check the warden’s pulse.

~*~

The afternoon is taken up with digging a shallow grave, the three of them caught in a somber silence as they bury the warden. They leave the sarcophagus where it is - no way to move it or hide it and they just had to trust that the other team would be too busy with the actual statue to wonder about what Grimmjow and the brothers might have found.

“Wonder what killed him,” Ichigo says that evening, when they’re sitting around a small fire after dinner.

“Did you ever see him eat?” Kon retorts, but it lacks his usual humor.

“Seems our American friends had a little misfortune of their own today,” Grimmjow reports. Yammy had been talking about it as he passed by earlier. “Three of their diggers were, uh, melted.”

“What?”

“How?”

“Salt acid,” Grimmjow says. “Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of booby trap.”

They all exchange a look and Kon grimaces, tossing a twig onto the fire. “Maybe this place really is cursed,” he says and the fire gutters for a second, the wind rising long enough to sound like a moan as it runs over the rock. Grimmjow looks at Kon and is gratified to see that he’s not the only one kind of concerned about the weird noises around here.

The last time he was here, they hadn’t been around long enough to notice weird noises, not that he would have heard them over Luppi’s snoring to start with.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, you two,” Ichigo huffs.

“You don’t believe in curses, huh?” Grimmjow asks, poking the fire, just to be sure.

“No, I don’t,” Ichigo says and right. He doesn’t believe in fairy tales and hokum, Grimmjow remembers. He thinks today’s events might be a bit more than that, though. “I believe if I can see it and I can touch it, it’s real. That’s what I believe.”

“I believe in being prepared,” Grimmjow says, reaching for his shotgun. Again, just in case. Curses aside, most things could be shot, in Grimmjow’s experience.

“Right,” Kon says, reaching for the warden’s pack. “Let’s see what our friend the warden believed in.”

He rummages around for a second, Grimmjow watching out of the corner of his eye. The bag is neither ancient nor buried, there shouldn’t be a boobytrap in it, but after the way the day has gone, Grimmjow honestly won’t be too surprised if it somehow is.

Then Kon yelps and both Grimmjow and Ichigo shout in startled response, flinching back. Grimmjow even gets both hands on the shotgun and has it halfway to aimed at Kon before he realizes Kon’s shaking out his hand, but doesn’t seem particularly injured.

“Broken bottle,” Kon says, reaching back into the bag more carefully. “Glenlivet. Twelve years old. Well, he may have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste.” He uncorks the bottle, sniffing and making an appreciative noise.

Behind them, a horse whinnies and Grimmjow twists to look over. It’s not the first time there’s been noise this evening and it’s been bothering him. Time to go figure out what it is. He hands the shotgun to Ichigo. “Take this. Stay here,” he says, getting up and grabbing his pistols.

There’s a beat of silence behind him as he heads for the other camp, then, “No, wait, wait! Wait for me!”

“Ichigo! Didn’t the man  _ just _ say to stay here? Ichigo!”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes. Civilians.

The Americans don’t seem too concerned, just yet, Grimmjow finds as he gets closer. The workers - huddled around their own campfire a short distance away - seem nervous, though Grimmjow can’t exactly blame them after the salt acid thing. For a second, he thinks he’s jumped the gun a bit, but then there’s a whoop from the wall and men in the same black robes as those that had snuck onto the barge come riding through a gap, waving torches and blades and guns.

Grimmjow reels for a moment, the scene overlaid with  _ day, soldiers in uniform running, the enemy soldiers on horseback cutting them down  _ before the now reasserts itself and he’s lifting his gun to fire back at the invaders. Around him, the camp dissolves into chaos, screams and shouts and gunfire and horses and that same ululating call that was so unnerving three years ago.

He finds a position that’s a bit elevated, next to a skewed plinth, and starts taking shots through the raised dust. Around him, he can hear the Americans shouting, the irregular sound of multiple guns going off.

“Jeagerjaques!” Kon yells and Grimmjow spins to find him, finally spots him running in front of a man on horseback, on track to run right in front of him. He takes a step back, braces himself, launches himself into the air. He collides with the rider in a heavy impact that knocks them into a tent, taking the horse with them, and Grimmjow rolls free, pulling his pistol up and firing almost before it’s aimed.

His opponent has good reflexes, sword out and raised enough to actually block the half-wild shot, though the impact makes him lose grip on it. A shout pulls Grimmjow’s attention to the side for just long enough that he’s surprised when a second blade comes at him and it’s all he can do to block it with his pistol, even though it means losing the pistol.

He twists and rolls to avoid another sweep of the blade. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees - perfect. He closes his hand around the hard cylinder, takes just long enough to make sure the fuse is a good length, then pushes it into the fire.

The robed man fighting him knows what dynamite is, at least, because he hesitates when Grimmjow swings it around, lit fuse dangling. “Enough!” he shouts. “Yallah!” and slowly, the chaos of the fight quiets, focus shifting to the standoff between Grimmjow and the robed man.

He looks at Grimmjow, steady. “We will shed no more blood, but you must leave,” he says. “Leave this place or die.”

Which, look. Grimmjow’s not the biggest fan of Las Noches, never has been, but he also doesn’t do well with vague threats like this.

“You have one day,” the man says, turning away. The other riders, some of them doubled up with injured or dead comrades, wheel their horses around. One of them leads a riderless horse over for the man to mount and then they’re all leaving, riding out the way they came in, leaving the camp in shambles.

Grimmjow pulls the fuse out of the stick of dynamite, extinguishes it in the sand. He glances around, but everyone mostly seems to be seeing to themselves or the fallen. Then a splash of orange catches his eye and Grimmjow has the particularly nauseating sensation of fearing the worst because Ichigo’s just  _ lying there _ .

“Ichigo.”

He hurries over, relaxing only when Ichigo looks at him, blinking slowly. “I think I shot someone,” he says, quiet. Grimmjow takes a breath, lets it out slow. Right.

First order of business is getting Ichigo off the ground, away from the still form that he might have tripped over. Grimmjow crouches and helps pull the other man up. “Are you all right?” he asks, voice just as quiet.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Ichigo says.

Grimmjow gets him upright, hands on Ichigo’s elbows, checking him over just in case. “You sure?” He grips Ichigo’s chin - gently, as gently as he can manage, his fingers feeling too rough against pale skin - and tilts Ichigo’s head side to side, making sure there’s nothing but a bit of dust and sand on him. Ichigo’s hands come up, press lightly at Grimmjow’s chest and they’re warm despite the cool night air that’s settling in.

“Yes, thank you,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow can’t look away, watching in fascination as his hand shifts on its own, slides back along Ichigo’s jaw, those kohl-lined eyes blinking at him, soft and entirely too trusting for someone who’s only known him for a week at most.

“That proves it,” Yammy says loudly, interrupting the moment. “Old Miyako’s fortune’s gotta be under this sand. For them to protect it like this, you know there’s treasure down there.”

Ichigo flushes, ducking his head, and Grimmjow lets his hand fall away, though he keeps the other at Ichigo’s elbow, shifts it to the small of Ichigo’s back as they turn. “No,” he says. “These men are desert people. They value water, not gold.”

“You know,” Szayel says, coming up, half his face covered with shaving cream. “Maybe, just at night, we could, uh, combine forces, maybe?”

Both Grimmjow and Ichigo look at him, but neither reply. It’s a decent enough idea, though.

~*~

An hour later, Kon is asleep next to the fire, mostly empty bottle of whisky tucked into one arm, and Ichigo is happily buzzed enough to not remember that he’d possibly shot someone earlier. Instead, he’s insistent on learning at least a bit of self-defense, so Grimmjow’s humoring him with some basic punches.

“Alright, tough stuff, try a right hook,” he says, reaching out to correct Ichigo’s form. Not that he expects Ichigo to remember any of this, but it’s an excuse to touch him, to feel soft fabric and softer skin. “Ball up your fist and put it - put it up like that.”

Ichigo nods, causing his whole body to sway. “Mmhm.”

“And then mean it,” Grimmjow says, holding out a palm for Ichigo to aim for. “Hit it right here.”

“I mean it!” Ichigo giggles and, well, he  _ does _ hit Grimmjow’s hand. He just also overbalances and spins, making Grimmjow jolt forward to catch him, hands under Ichigo’s arms and holding up his weight.

“Okay,” Grimmjow says, amused. He hauls a still-giggling Ichigo back closer to the fire. “Okay, time for another drink.” And probably a cessation of punching lessons for now.

“Unlike my brother, sir,” Ichigo says, sitting and holding up a finger like he’s going to give Grimmjow a lesson. Then he turns and grabs the bottle from Kon’s arm, even as he continues, saying, “I know when to say no.”

Grimmjow watches him take a long pull. “Uh-huh. And unlike your brother, you, I just don’t get.”

And it’s true. Kon is easy enough, what you see is pretty much what you get, though Grimmjow’s starting to suspect that Kon’s got more of a history than he lets on. But Ichigo...Ichigo is a bizarre combination of traits that keep catching Grimmjow by surprise and throwing him off-balance and he’s never sure what’s coming next.

Ichigo glances at him, smiling and nodding as he sways back towards Kon, replaces the bottle. “Ah. I know. You’re wondering, what’s a place like me doing in a man like this,” he says, surprisingly clearly for as drunk as he is.

“Yeah. Something like that,” Grimmjow says, not bothering to disguise how amused he is. Not like Ichigo’s likely to remember this, after all.

Ichigo leans in a bit, eyes wide and serious. “Hueco Mundo is in my blood,” he says, reaching into his clothes and producing a pocket watch that he opens and turns so Grimmjow can see the two tiny portraits tucked inside. “You see, my - my mother was a very, very famous explorer and she loved Hueco Mundo so much, she married my father, who was from Seireitei and quite an adventurer himself.”

Grmmjow nods, reaching out to gently close the pocket watch. “Yeah. I get your mother and I get your father. And, uh, I get him.” He points at Kon, still dead asleep. “But what are  _ you  _ doing here?”

It’s a question he’s been trying to answer since that day Ichigo had leaned in, eyes wide and intent, asking if Grimmjow would show him how to find Las Noches. Almost a week later and he still hasn’t found an answer.

Ichigo’s face twists up in what Grimmjow thinks is frustration. “Oh. Look. I - I may not be an explorer or - or an adventurer.” He pushes himself to his feet, shaking off the hand Grimmjow automatically reaches out to steady him with. “Or a treasure seeker or a gunfighter, Mr. Jaegerjacques, but I am proud of what I am.”

He’s staring off into the distance like this is some grand speech and Grimmjow’s a little unsure as to where this is going.

“And...what is that?” he asks.

“I…” Ichigo starts, looking at him. He smiles. “I am a librarian.”

Which answers exactly zero of Grimmjow’s questions, really. But it’s kind of adorable, how determined Ichigo is about it.

Ichigo drops down to his knees, a lot closer to Grimmjow than he’d been before, still watching him with eyes dark with drink. “And I am going to kiss you, Mr. Jaegerjacques,” he announces, voice suddenly gone soft and private.

“Call me Grimmjow,” Grimmjow manages. He thinks that’s probably the least he can do, really, if this librarian is going to kiss him. And he kind of really wants Ichigo to kiss him.

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo echoes, smiling like that’s the best thing in the world. It sounds it, honestly, Grimmjow’s name spoken like that.

Then Ichigo is leaning in, eyes slipping shut and Grimmjow has to quickly figure out which direction to tilt his head and he’s maybe leaning in just a little, to meet Ichigo partway and - 

Ichigo pitches forward, suddenly, forehead impacting just below Grimmjow’s collarbone, and then the whole of him is boneless in Grimmjow’s lap, snoring faintly. Grimmjow blinks into now-empty space.

Yeah. That figures.

He shakes his head and gets to work making sure Ichigo is in a comfortable position for sleeping, then hunkers down himself, watching the fire through hooded eyes until it fades into coals and embers.

~*~

“Oooh, I’ve dreamt about this since I was a little boy,” Ichigo says as Mr. Jaegerjacques and Kon haul the sarcophagus - the one that had been inside the big stone sarcophagus, of course, not the outer one - up against the wall. It’s expertly carved, the details exact, but there’s no evidence that it was painted at all, the entire thing the dull brown-gray.of treated wood. It’s strange, especially when combined with the outer sarcophagus, which, aside from the inscription and the lock, were also very plain and unadorned.

“You dream about dead people?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks. He’d been weird at breakfast, kept looking at him and then away when he caught him doing it, and Ichigo’s not sure why. The headache he still has the remnants of says he got drunk, so he can only assume he’s done something weird that he can’t remember.

He settles for ignoring the question in favor of pointing out the sacred spells that have been chiseled off. “This woman must have been condemned not only in this life, but in the next.” Curious that she’d been mummified, then, but maybe the condemners had wanted to be sure that the intended fate was carried out.

“Tough break,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says.

“Yeah,” Kon says, fitting the key to the lock and twisting. “I’m all tears. Now, let’s see who’s inside, shall we?”

He and Mr. Jaegerjacques strain to pry the lid off and Ichigo backs up to give them room. He does his best not to look at the way Mr. Jaegerjacques’ sleeve goes tight across his bicep and fails.

The lid comes free with a hiss of pressurized air and dust and the mummy inside jerks forward and they all scream.

“Oh, my god, I  _ hate  _ it when these things do that,” Ichigo huffs, stepping around the fallen lid to get a closer look at the mummy that has half popped itself out of the sarcophagus.

“Is it supposed to look like that?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks, looking at the mummy with disgust.

Which, fair enough. “No,” Ichigo says. “I’ve never seen a mummy look like this before. She’s still….stilll…”

“Juicy,” Kon and Mr. Jaegerjacques supply in unison.

“Yes,” Ichigo agrees. “She must be more than three thousand years old, but she looks like she’s still decomposing.”

Mr. Jaegerjacques glances past Ichigo at the lid. “Hey, look at that.” He steps away from the mummy to kneel by the lid and Ichigo reluctantly follows with one last, unsure look at the mummy. It’s still  _ glistening _ . “What do you make of this?”

“These marks,” Ichigo says slowly. “They were made with fingernails.” He drags his fingers over one set, but the whole inside of the coffin is covered in them, deep and shallow, long and short. He looks up at the mummy again. “This woman was buried alive. And she left a message,” Ichigo adds, looking back at the lid. There are marks that aren’t random scratches, etched into an empty section. He sounds out the marks silently, translating out loud.

“Death...is only the beginning.”

They all turn to look up at the mummy, which is staring out sightlessly, and Ichigo shivers.

~*~

They don’t get much more done that day, as the sarcophagi don’t reveal any new information and there’s nothing around the mummy itself to give any clues about who she’d been in life. Ichigo’s disappointed, but it’s almost made up for by the fact that they found the mummy in the first place.

The one thing he does find are the hardened corpses of scarabs, which are interesting enough for him to gather up a handful and take out into the evening. Mr. Jaegerjacques and Kon had left earlier, claiming hunger and boredom respectively, while he continued to examine the mummy.

He passes by the other historian on the way to their fire, doing a double-take when he sees the man struggling with a large, black book. Not the Book of Hyosube, but it’s still a book - he’s filled with blinding jealousy for a moment, but then another detail registers. He turns to the historian, as casual as he can manage.

“I believe you need a key to open that book,” he says, glancing at the familiar starburst lock on the front. The historian looks down at the book, confused, but Ichigo’s already moving on.

The other Americans are crouched next to the fire as Ichigo approaches, laughing at something or other. Mr. Jaegerjacques is grinning, but it doesn’t look like honest amusement. 

“Look what I found,” Ichigo says as he gets closer.

Mr. Jaegerjacques turns to the man sitting next to him - Luppi, Ichigo thinks, though he has yet to actually speak to him. “You’re in his seat.”

Luppi scoffs quietly until Mr. Jaegerjacques continues with a firm, “Now,” at which point he scrambles to find a different spot.

Ichigo drops into the space left, right between Kon and Mr. Jaegerjacques, holding out his handful of discoveries. “Scarab skeletons. Flesh eaters. I found them inside our friend’s coffin. They can stay alive for years, feasting on the flesh of a corpse.” Both Kon and Mr. Jaegerjacques reach over, taking one of the skeletons to examine. “Unfortunately for our friend, she was still alive when they started eating her.”

The Americans look somewhat disturbed at the thought.

“So someone threw these in with our girl and then they slowly ate her alive?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks.

“Very slowly,” Ichigo tells him.

“She certainly wasn’t a popular fellow when they planted her,” Kon says.

“Well, she probably got a little too frisky with the god-king’s son. Or daughter,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says, dropping his scarab back into Ichigo’s hand. Ichigo laughs a little at that and Mr. Jaegerjacques smiles back.

“Well, according to my readings, our friend suffered from the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient Hollow curses, one reserved only for the most evil of blasphemers. In all my research, I’ve never heard of this curse having actually been performed.”

“That bad, huh?”

Ichigo’s starting to feel a bit like they’re putting on a show for the Americans, who are watching them, looking concerned. But Mr. Jaegerjacques is looking at him, focused on what he’s saying and asking questions and it’s...it’s kind of heady, that sort of attention.

“Well, yes. They never used it because they feared it so. It’s written that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise, he - or she, I guess - would bring with them the ten plagues of Hueco Mundo.”

That’s enough for the Americans, who shortly excuse themselves back to their own fire, which is now somewhat closer than it had been, after the encounter with the desert tribe, something that makes Mr. Jaegerjacques grin. It’s a nice grin, for all that Ichigo suspects it’s caused by not-so-nice thoughts.

Later, when the moon is up and the fire’s died down and the activity around the other fire has settled into the quiet of sleep, Ichigo slips away, back to where the other historian’s cot is. That book had been black, not gold, and if it isn’t the Book of Oetsu, then Ichigo’s got an inkling as to what it is. He’d like to find out for sure.

It’s easy enough to slip the book out from under the other historian’s arm and then Ichigo is slipping back to his own fire and the key that they’ve kept tucked in one of the packs. Kon’s fast asleep still and Mr. Jaegerjacques seems to be similarly inclined, if still armed with a shotgun across his lap, so hopefully Ichigo won’t be interrupted.

He’s just sitting down when Mr. Jaegerjacques speaks, however. “That’s called stealing, you know,” he says, mild.

“According to you and my brother,” Ichigo says, hiding his surprise and focusing on digging out the key. “It’s called borrowing.”

“I thought the Book of Oetsu was made out of gold,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says, moving to join Ichigo.

“It is,” Ichigo says, a little distracted as he works on opening the key. “This isn’t the Book of Oetsu. This is something else.” The key pops open with a click and he sets it in the lock on the cover of the book. “I think this may be the Book of the Dead.”

“The Book of the Dead?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks. “Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing?”

Ichigo snorts a little. “It’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book.”

The latches click open with ease when Ichigo turns the key and he opens the first leaf with confidence, then goes still when the wind abruptly rises, carrying the sounds of jackals.

Beside him, Mr. Jaegerjacques tenses until the wind dies again. “That happens a lot around here,” he says, which is true enough, if not exactly enough to prove anything supernatural to Ichigo. “So, what’s it say?”

Ichigo runs his fingers over the engravings, getting a sense of it before he speaks. “Amun Ra. Amun Dei. It speaks of the night and of the day.” He moves his finger as he reads, the syllables of ancient Hollow easy on his tongue as he reads. “Suei wa hara otu-upsim masit ba-aya rukia in sum pikhe setsuye yehtoweh yehtoweh yehtoweh.”

“ _ No _ !” someone shouts and Ichigo looks up to see the historian sitting up and staring at them, eyes wide and panicked. “You must not read from the book!”

The wind shifts, just then, and Ichigo glances at Mr. Jaegerjacques, unsure, before following his gaze out towards the desert. A camel grunts nearby and Kon sits up, confused. Around them, other members of the camp start to wake, on edge. There’s a high-pitched buzz that’s growing louder every second, like crickets in high summer.

Mr. Jaegerjacques stands and Ichigo scrambles after him, unsure. On the horizon, visible through a break in the wall, a dark line grows larger and larger until parts of it break off, spreading out until the nature of it is clear. And then it’s almost too late, Mr. Jaegerjacques and the Americans shouting to run as the locusts descend.

“Where the hell did they come from?” someone yells as they stampede into the ruins.

“I ain’t waitin’ around to find out!”

They split at some point, the Americans and whoever else managed to make it to safety going one way, while Ichigo, his brother, and Mr. Jaegerjacques go another. Ichigo can hear distant shouts, but the noise is quickly lost among the stone and sand.

Turning a corner, Mr. Jaegerjacques in front, they’re making their way slowly when a dull thud echoes through the hall and the sand in front of them starts to swell up.

It builds like an ant mound before bursting at the top, large beetles with iridescent chitin scrambling out and - “Scarabs!” Ichigo yells and they all turn to run.

“Run, Ichigo!”

“Go! Run, run, run!”

Ichigo doesn’t look back, even when he hears the shotgun fire once, twice. He keeps moving, ducking through a doorway and up a ramp that drops off to either side, pillars that support nothing filling the space. He leaps for the first platform he sees, several feet between it and the ramp, hears Kon and Mr .Jaegerjacques as they jump for their own places of safety, and turns to watch the flood of insects scurry past, his back pressed against cool stone.

The insects are innumerable, their movements together making an incredible amount of noise, a weird hissing and the tiny  _ click-click-click _ of their legs moving against stone magnified a hundred thousand times.

It’s terrifying, in a very base way.

Then the stone behind him gives way and Ichigo loses his balance, stumbling back into darkness. When he comes to a stop, he’s in a different room entirely, much darker and rougher than the space he was just in, though shafts of moonlight light it up enough to see and prove that he hasn’t fallen any deeper into the complex..

Moaning behind him makes him scramble back to his feet, but when he looks, he recognizes the white shirt and suspenders. “Oh, Mr. Szayel, thank goodness. You scared me,” he admits, heading over.

Mr. Szayel turns to look at him, only - Ichigo can’t help the recoil, staring in horror at the empty pits where eyes should be. Where eyes  _ had been _ , just earlier that evening. “My eyes,” Mr. Szayel moans. “My eyes.”

Mr. Szayel advances and Ichigo retreats without thinking, only to jump again when he hears something move behind him. There’s only just enough time for him to turn around when a mummy looms out of the darkness and roars at him.

Ichigo screams.

The mummy moves forward and Ichigo again retreats, eyes fixed on it. This is no puppet or inanimate corpse prodded into motion by his brother. This is a mummy, an actual mummy,  _ his _ mummy that they found at the foot of the statue of Oetsu, that’s actually walking towards him, that is animated by some non-physical means. It -  _ she _ steps into a shaft of moonlight and Ichigo can see eyes, whole and fixed on him.

Ichigo feels stone at his back and stops moving, though the mummy keeps advancing. She’s shorter than him, he realizes abruptly, but she’s no less terrifying for it. He risks looking away from her to glance at Mr. Szayel. “Help me,” he tries, voice small and choked. “Please…”

“My tongue,” Mr. Szayel groans. “She took my tongue.”

The mummy glances at him, then back to Ichigo, head tilting in consideration. “Shiba Kaien?”

And that’s - that’s speech, actual words, coming out of a mummy’s mouth. Ichigo almost misses that it sounds like ancient Hollow in his surprise, but then she keeps talking and yeah, that’s definitely ancient Hollow.

“Come with me, my Prince Shiba Kaien,” she says and holds out a hand to him.

“There you are!” Mr. Jaegerjacques calls from the side, but Ichigo doesn’t dare look towards him, eyes still fixed on the mummy. Then Mr. Jaegerjacques is there, right next to him. “Will you stop playing hide and seek? We need to get out of here - whoa!”

He jerks back against the wall next to Ichigo, shotgun coming up defensively, and Kon appears in the doorway that Mr. Jaegerjacques had come through. “Ichigo?”

The mummy turns to growl at him and Kon gasps, high-pitched and startled, and drops his torch. The other two Americans are behind him and they come up short behind Kon, gaping at the mummy.

She turns to roar at Ichigo and Mr. Jaegerjacques, making Ichigo flinch, but then Mr. Jaegerjacques leans forward to yell right back at her, gun coming up to shoot at her point blank. “Move!” he yells, shoving Ichigo towards the exit.

The others are close behind. “Yeah, right!”

“Did you see that?” Kon yells.

“It was walking! It was walking!”

They book it out of the ruins only to nearly run into the muzzles of the robed riders from the night before, though this time they’re on foot. Mr. Jaegerjacques lifts his gun again, but doesn’t shoot. They’re far outnumbered, after all, the historian is huddled with the riders, the Book of the Dead clutched to his chest. He lowers the gun as they all put their hands up.

“I told you to leave or die,” the man in the center says, pulling down his face wrap to show a face marked with small tattoos. “You refused. Now you may have killed us all, for you have unleashed a creature that we have feared for more than three thousand years.”

“Relax,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says. “I got her.”

“No mortal weapon can kill this creature,” the man says. “She’s not of this world.”

He steps aside for two of his men to haul forward a familiar figure. They drop Mr. Szayel with his friends, Mr. Yammy catching him.

“You bastards. What did you do to him?” Mr. Nnoitra asks.

“We saved him,” the robed man says. “Saved him before the creature could finish her work. Leave, all of you, quickly, before she finishes you all.”

The robed men lower their guns, moving past their small group.

“We must now go on the hunt and try and find a way to kill her.”

“I already told you I got her,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says as the man passes him.

The man turns back to look at him. “Know this. This creature is the bringer of death. She will never eat, she will never sleep, and she will never stop.”

With that, he turns and disappears into the ruins with his men, leaving the seven of them alone in the night again.

~*~

The ride back to Seireitei is made in record time, all of them pushing as far into the night as they can before having to stop to let the horses rest. When they finally ride back through the gates, it’s under an ominously dark sky, lightning cracking across the clouds in jagged lines. They find rooms in the fort - a Royal Air Corps institution, though Mr. Jaegerjacques apparently has some military history that gains them access - for Mr. Jaegerjacques and the Americans, then Ichigo goes home to pack a few essentials.

Not to leave with the others, on ships bound for Karakura, for Naruki, for somewhere that isn’t  _ here _ , however; Ichigo had time to think on the trip back and he’s come to a couple of conclusions and running away no longer features in his plans for the near future.

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in that fairy tale and hokum stuff,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says, carrying items out of the closet and dumping them into a suitcase. He volunteered to come with when Ichigo said he was going home and Ichigo hadn’t managed to find a reason why he couldn’t. “Shoo,” he says to the house cat, a soft, white creature that has spent many an evening curled up in Ichigo’s lap.

Ichigo makes a face at the clothes Mr. Jaegerjacques has grabbed and scoops the cat up and out of the way, dropping her onto the bed. “Having an encounter with a three thousand year old walking, talking corpse does tend to convert one,” he retorts, grabbing the clothes out of the suitcase as Mr. Jaegerjacques goes to the dresser. He’s not going to need his entire wardrobe for this, hopefully.

“Forget it,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says. “We’re out the door, down the hall, and we’re gone.”

“Oh, no, we are not.”

“Oh, yes, we are,” Mr. Jaegerjacques parrots back, making Ichigo scowl as he scoops the newest bundle of clothes out of the suitcase, dumping them back into the dresser drawer.

“Oh, no, we are not. We woke her up and we are going to stop her.”

“We? What  _ we _ ? We didn’t read that book. I told you not to play around with that thing. Didn’t I tell you not to play around with that thing?” Mr. Jaegerjacques drops a stack of books into the suitcase, undeterred.

Ichigo rolls his eyes. “Fine. Me, me, me, I, I, I. I woke her up and I intend to stop her.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mr. Jaegerjacques asks around another armful of books. “How? You heard the man, no mortal weapons can kill this girl.”

“Then we are just going to have to find some immortal ones,” Ichigo says.

“There goes that we again,” Mr. Jaegerjacques mutters as Ichigo snatches his typewriter out of the man’s hands.

“Will you listen to me,” Ichigo hisses, fumbling the typewriter around the books he’s still holding, getting everything back onto the desk. “We have to do  _ something _ .”

He comes back around to close the suitcase, wincing a little when he accidentally slams the lid on Mr. Jaegerjacques’ fingers. But he’s never let something like that deter him before and he’s not going to start now.

“Once that creature has been reborn, her curse is going to spread until the whole of the Earth is destroyed,” Ichigo continues, following Mr. Jaegerjacques around the suitcase as the other man shakes out his hands.

Mr. Jaegerjacques stops and turns to face him, eyebrows up. “Yeah? Is that my problem?”

“It is everybody’s problem!” Ichigo says, even though he feels like that should be pretty obvious at this point.

Mr. Jaegerjacques makes a face and Ichigo quickly puts the suitcase between them again. Just in case. It doesn’t really help, as Mr. Jaegerjacques follows him, chasing Ichigo around the suitcase instead this time.

“Ichigo, I appreciate you saving my life and all, but when I signed on, I agreed to take you out there and to bring you back. And I have done that. End of job. End of story. Contract terminated!” His hands are loud as they slap down on top of the suitcase, whole body leaning over it as if he’s thinking about going right through it to get to Ichigo.

“That’s all I am to you? A contract?” It slips out before Ichigo can stop it, a weird stab of hurt in the middle of his indignation, the remembered feel of rough fingers against his cheek and jaw, blue eyes so close.

Mr. Jaegerjacques either doesn’t hear it or ignores it. “Look. You can either tag along with me or you can stay here and try and save the world,” he says, intent. “What’s it gonna be?”

Ichigo sets his jaw. “I’m staying.”

A long moment where they stare at each other and Ichigo “Fine,” Mr. Jaegerjacques says, turning to head for the door.

“Fine!” Ichigo says back.

Mr. Jaegerjacques shrugs, loose and expressive, not even looking back. “Fine.”

“Fine.” Ichigo repeats, a little less certain but still stubborn.

And then the doors shut with a bang and Ichigo is alone with his determination to set things right.

~*~

“I’m the last of the Royal Air Corps still stationed out here, you know,” Grimmjow hears above the general murmur of conversations and the clink of glasses. “All the other laddies died in the sky and were buried in the sand. Good chaps, every one of them, too.”

It’s a familiar voice and as he heads for the bar where he’d last seen Kon, he’s not surprised to bump into Ikkaku halfway across the courtyard, a woman on one arm and swaying like he’s already a bottle in.

“Hi, Ikkaku,” Grimmjow says, almost absently, patting the man’s shoulder as he passes.

“Wha - oh. Oh! You know, Jaegerjacques,” Ikkaku says, abandoning the painted lady who had been holding his arm to follow Grimmjow. “Ever since the end of the Great War, there hasn’t been a - a single challenge worthy of a man like me.”

Grimmjow smacks at Kon’s shoulder as he gets closer, jerking his head over his shoulder at Ikkaku when Kon looks at him. Kon glances that way, then hurriedly tucks the key back into his pocket. No need to advertise their little adventure, after all.

“We’ve all got our little problems today, Ikkaku,” Grimmjow says, taking a seat at the bar. Kon reaches over to pour them both a shot of whisky.

“I just wish I could have chucked it in with the others,” Ikkaku continues. “And gone down in flame and glory instead of sitting around here rotting of boredom and booze. Cheers,” he adds, reaching over to take Kon’s shot right out of his hand.

Kon gives him an incredulous look, but doesn’t say anything, apparently in a rare mood of not wanting to talk.

“Oh, well, back to the airfield,” Ikkaku says, laughing as he slaps their backs. He turns to head off and Grimmjow sips at his shot.

“Tell me,” he says as Kon pours another shot. “Has your brother always been…?”

“Oh, yes, always,” Kon says, dry. 

Beyond him, Yammy appears to lean on the bar “We’re all packed up, but the damn boat doesn’t leave till tomorrow morning,” he says.

“Tail set firmly between your legs, I see,” Kon says as Nnoitra leans in next to Grimmjow, flagging down the bartender for a shot of his own.

“You can talk,” Yammy huffs. “You don’t have some sacred walkin’ corpse after ya.” He reaches over for the bottle of whisky.

Nnoitra tosses back his shot and Grimmjow looks at him. “So, uh, how’s your friend?”

“He had his eyes and his tongue ripped out,” Nnoitra says. “How would you be?” He turns to go and Grimmjow lets him, because fair enough.

They drink in silence for a minute, then Kon sighs and turns around to lean back against the bar. “Well, guess this is the last night, then,” he says as Grimmjow and Yammy turn to follow suit. He holds up his shot glass. “Good luck, boys.”

Grimmjow and Yammy tap their glasses to his and they all toss back their shots.

And then promptly spit it out in unison.

Around the bar, others are doing the same, faces a mixture of surprise and disgust. Yammy wipes at his mouth. “Sweet Jesus! Tasted just like - “

“Blood,” Grimmjow finishes, staring out at the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, where the clear water has turned an odd reddish color.

“And the rivers and waters ran red,” Kon says. “And were as blood.”

No one needs the reference explained, but if the plagues are happening here, then…

“She’s here,”Grimmjow says, glancing around.

After that, they’re quick to set their glasses down and head out. Yammy almost runs upstairs, following Nnoitra to the rooms they’ve booked, while Grimmjow heads back to where he’d last seen Ichigo. He’s not sure where Kon goes, but he’s sure he won’t go far.

He finds Ichigo quickly enough, walking through the main courtyard, nose in a book. “Ichigo!”

“Oh, so you’re still here,” Ichigo says, looking up, because at some point when Grimmjow wasn’t looking, he’d turned into even more of a contrary, sassy little thing. Grimmjow likes it somewhat more than he wants to admit to right now.

“We’ve got problems,” he says and thunder claps, louder than before.

They look out to see it suddenly hailing, with larger chunks streaming fire as they fall from the sky. One and two turn into ten and fifty, until it’s impossible to count the streaks of red through the dark sky and there’s chaos everywhere as people try to dodge the deadly rain.

Grimmjow grabs Ichigo’s arm, hauls him along as they head back towards the stairs, most of their attention focused on the meteors. Then a familiar whimper registers and Grimmjow turns to see Luppi on the stairs, trying to sneak back up them.

“Hey! Luppi, you little stinkweed. Where you been?” He grabs the guy, pushes him against the wall.

He doesn’t get an answer, as a loud roaring from upstairs distracts him and Luppi takes the chance to eel out of his grip and make his escape. For a second, Grimmjow thinks about chasing after him, but there will be plenty of time to deal with Luppi after they find a way to deal with the stupid mummy, so he grabs for Ichigo again, draws his pistol, and heads up the stairs.

Finding the room isn’t hard, it’s the only one with the front door open wide. Also, presumably the only one with a desiccated corpse in an armchair.

Ichigo gasps behind him and even Grimmjow grimaces. Hell of a way to go.

Movement catches his attention and he lifts his gun again at where the mummy is standing in front of the fireplace, limbs jerking around like a marionette’s as the bandages that covered her body seemed to expand and shift to become a sort of skin. Regrowing muscle and ligaments, Grimmjow realizes. She’s definitely looking more...feminine, in a way.

“We are in serious trouble,” he says.

She turns towards them, starts walking, and Grimmjow pulls his second pistol, fires at her even though he knows it’s useless. The bullets go through her, shatter the vases on top of the mantle, leave neat holes in the tilework. They don't do anything to stop the mummy’s advance.

He runs out of bullets right as she reaches him, guns nothing but dead weight when she reaches out to grab his vest, throwing him across the room. He yells, but the expected hard impact is broken by what feels like bodies under him. Grimmjow twists, sees Kon and the Americans in a heap under him.

“Goddamn it,” he growls, fighting to get upright again. The mummy is saying something to Ichigo, who’s cornered against some bookcases, and bullets or no, Grimmjow’s ready to go over there and strangle the mummy with his bare hands.

Discordant notes from the piano stop him in his tracks though and he looks over to see a cat walking over the keys, apparently unconcerned by the mummy.

The mummy, however, seems very concerned by the cat. She gasps and whirls away from Ichigo, a miniature tornado of sand rising to sweep her across the room and out the window, shutters banging shut behind her.

Grimmjow stares after her. “We are in very serious trouble.”

Once they check that everyone’s unharmed - Szayel aside, since Grimmjow’s fairly sure that instant mummification isn’t something people usually come back from, current situation not-withstanding - Ichigo shakily suggests they go talk to his boss, the curator at the Museum of Antiquities. Given a lack of any better ideas, everyone else agrees and they head across the city.

“She does seem to like Ichigo,” Kon points out as they walk into the museum. Ichigo grabs a passing worker, asks for the curator’s location.

“Yeah, what’s that about?” Grimmjow mutters. He glances around, curious despite himself at seeing Ichigo’s place of work. Less a library and more a historian’s wet dream, he thinks.

“What’s this broad want, anyway?” Yammy asks.

“There’s only one person I know that can give us any answers,” Ichigo says.

They turn the corner into the room they’d been directed to and Ichigo stops short, fast enough that Grimmjow almost runs into him. “You!”

There are two men, one of which Grimmjow doesn’t recognize - thin, dressed in green robes, a striped bucket hat on his head - and one that he does. He fumbles for his pistol, hears Kon and the Americans follow suit.

“Mister Kurosaki,” Bucket Hat says, mild, turning away from the robed man to look at them. “Gentlemen.”

“What is he doing here?” Ichigo asks.

Bucket Hat - probably the curator, but Grimmjow doesn’t remember his name - blinks at them. “Do you really want to know or would you prefer to just shoot us?”

Grimmjow weighs that and comes to the conclusion that: “After what I just saw, I’m willing to go on a little faith here.” He holsters his pistol, sees movement out of the corner of his eye as the others follow suit.

Bucket Hat smiles and waves them into the room. There’s a display of chairs around a low table and Grimmjow takes one of them, Yammy settling into another. Grimmjow doesn’t care if they’re antiques or artifacts or whatever, he deserves to sit down for a few minutes. Ichigo and Kon remain standing, as does Nnoitra. 

“Very well,” Bucket Hat says when they’re all settled. “We are part of an ancient secret society. For over three thousand years, we have guarded the City of the Dead. We are sworn to do any and all in our power to stop the High Priest Rukia from being reborn into this world.”

“Now, because of you, we have failed,” the robed man says. Grimmjow really needs to get some names at some point.

“And you think this justifies the killing of innocent people?” Ichigo asks, indignant.

“To stop this creature? Let me think,” Bucket Hat says, feigning consideration. Then both he and the robed man say in unison: “Yes!”

Ichigo makes a face and walks away, so Grimmjow takes the opportunity, lifting a finger. “Question. Why doesn’t she like cats?”

“Cats are the guardians of the underworld. She will fear them until she is fully regenerated,” Robes says.

“Then she will fear nothing,” Bucket Hat adds.

“You know how she gets herself fully regenerated?” Nnoitra interrupts, sounding kind of angry about it.

“By killin’ everyone who opened that chest,” Yammy answers, eyes on the pistol he hasn’t actually holstered.

“And sucking them dry!” Nnoitra finishes. “That’s how!”

Bucket Hat’s eyebrows go up, but neither he nor Robes seems surprised by this. Grimmjow supposes they’ve known the details of the curse a lot longer, so they probably already know this, too.

“Kon, will you stop playing with that?” Ichigo hisses. Grimmjow glances over to where Kon’s found a bow and is miming shooting arrows at the wall. Kon winces and carefully replaces the bow in the hands of the statue behind him. Ichigo turns back to Bucket Hat and Robes. “When I saw her alive at Las Noches, she called me Shiba Kaien.” Bucket Hat exchanges a look with Robes. “And then, just now, in Mr. Szayel’s quarters, she tried - tried to kiss me.”

Grimmjow must have missed that, being on the floor, because he’s pretty sure he would remember that. And possibly lost his shit over it.

“It is because of her love for Shiba Kaien that she was cursed,” Bucket Hat says. “Apparently, even after three thousand years, she is still in love with him.”

“Yes, well, that’s all very romantic,” Ichigo says. Grimmjow would beg to differ - it sounds kind of creepy, to him. “But what has it got to do with me?”

“Perhaps she will once again try to raise him from the dead,” Robes says.

“Yes,” Bucket Hat agrees. “And it appears she has already chosen her human sacrifice.”

They both turn to look at Ichigo and Grimmjow frowns. Yeah, no, he didn’t sign up to let someone get sacrificed in some necromantic ritual.

“Bad luck, old chap,” Kon says. Ichigo makes a face at him.

“On the contrary,” Bucket Hat says, standing up. “It may just give us the time we need to kill the creature.”

“We will need all the help we can get,” Robes says, looking up at the windows near the ceiling. “Her powers are growing.”

They all follow his gaze to where the clouds are parting and the shadowed moon is moving incredibly fast to eclipse the sun. If Grimmjow hadn’t already been convinced, he’s pretty sure this would do it. He’s seen eclipses before, but they were slow, inexorable things, not this sped-up, impossible thing. The shadow sweeps across the floor, making everything dim like the sun had set, though there’s still an odd, orange sort of tinge to the air.

Kon pipes up with another quote. “And he stretched forth his hand towards the heavens and there was darkness throughout the land.”

~*~

The curator and robed man - Grimmjow still hasn’t gotten names and at this point, he’s resigned to never getting them - didn’t have any helpful solutions on weapons that  _ would _ work to kill the mummy, so the lot of them had left the museum no wiser than they’d arrived.

Ichigo’s rooms are closer than the fort, so they go there next to consider their next moves.

“We must stop her from regenerating,” Ichigo says, pacing around the small table in his foyer. “Who all opened that chest?”

“Me and Nnoitra,” Yammy volunteers. “And Szayel, obviously.”

“And that historian fellow,” Nnoitra says.

“What about my buddy Luppi?” Grimmjow asks from where he’s perched in the window, watching the eclipse. The moon has shown no sign of moving on.

“No, he scrammed out of there before we opened the thing,” Noitra says.

Yammy nods. “Yeah, he was the smart one.”

“Well, that sounds like Luppi,” Grimmjow says, rolling his eyes.

“We must find the historian and bring him back to the safety of the fort before the creature can get to him,” Ichigo says.

Grimmjow pushes away from the window to join them at the small table. “Right.” He points at Ichigo, then at the others. “He stays here. You three, come with me.”

The protests arise immediately. Ichigo doesn’t want to be left behind and none of the others want to go.

“Not me!”

“No.”

“I ain’t going out there!”

“Now just one second! You can’t just leave me here like some old carpetbag! Who put you in charge?”

Grimmjow almost misses the military, with its hierarchy and chain of command, where soldiers generally saluted and jumped to follow orders and didn’t talk back or protest. He rolls his eyes again and turns around, heading for Ichigo, bending to get an arm around Ichigo’s waist, hoisting him up over one shoulder, and ignoring the way Ichigo practically shrieks in his ear.

“Jaegerjacques,  _ what  _ do you  _ think  _ you’re doing? Kon!”

He hears Kon’s halfhearted response of, “Sorry, but he’s a bit...tall,” as he dumps Ichigo on the bed and turns around.

“Jaegerjacques, you are  _ not _ leaving me in here!” Ichigo protests again, but Grimmjow gets to the doors first, shuts them behind him and gets the key into the lock before Ichigo can manage to pull them out of his grip. “Jaegerjacques! If you don’t open this door in one minute!”

Grimmjow reaches out, grabs Nnoitra by his vest. “This door doesn’t open,” he says. “He doesn’t come out and no one goes in. Right?”

“R-right,” Nnoitra agrees, nodding.

“Right?” Grimmjow asks Yammy.

“Right.”

Grimmjow nods, drops the key into Nnoitra’s hand, and heads for the door again. “Let’s go, Kon.”

“Oh, uh, I thought I could just stay at the fort and, uh, reconnoiter,” Kon tries.

“Now!” Grimmjow shouts over his shoulder, halfway to the stairs already.

“Yeah, right, okay. We’re just. Gonna go rescue the historian fellow,” Kon tells the others before hurrying to catch up.

Finding the historian’s home turns out to be easier than expected. Grimmjow only has to make a couple of inquiries about men who’d joined up with a group of Americans for an expedition before they get directions.

When they get there, however, they find they’re not the first to arrive.

“Well, well, well,” Grimmjow says as they step through the open door. “Let me guess. Spring cleaning?”

Luppi whirls to face them, then books it towards the window. Grimmjow grabs the nearest object - a wooden chair - and chucks it at him, nailing the guy in the back.

“Nice shot,” Kon says, hanging back at the door as Grimmjow heads over to pick Luppi up by the back of his shirt.

“Oh, Luppi, did you fall down? Let me help you up,” Grimmjow says, hauling Luppi up to push him against a bookcase. Books fall down and something breaks. Grimmjow ignores it and grins at Luppi, as falsely friendly as he can manage. “You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn’t you, Luppi?”

“What friend?” Luppi manages. “You are my only friend.”

That’s a blatant lie, so Grimmjow hauls him around, throws him against the desk. “What the hell are you doing with this creep, huh? What’s in it for you?”

“It is better to be the right hand of the devil than to be in her path,” Luppi says, groaning. He’s probably going to be bruised to hell come morning. Whenever morning happens, given the perpetual darkness at the moment. “As long as I serve her, I am immune.”

Well, that’s nice and vague and concerning. Grimmjow throws him against another bookcase. Bruises are the least Luppi deserves at this point, in his opinion. “Immune from what?”

“Piszkas allat.”

“What did you say?”

“I don’t wanna tell you,” Luppi says, petulant. “You’ll just hurt me some more.”

Grimmjow really hates dealing with this nonsense. He picks Luppi up, lifts him into the center of the room, the fan whirling away just inches above Luppi’s head. “What are you looking for? And try not to lie to me, Luppi.”

“The book!” Luppi says immediately, eyes fixed on the spinning blades. “The black book they found at Las Noches! She wants it back! She said to me it would be worth its weight in gold.”

“What does he want the book for?” Kon asks, joining them.

“Oh, come on, I don’t know,” Luppi cries. Grimmjow lifts him closer to the fan and Luppi breaks immediately. “Something about bringing her dead boyfriend back to life! But that’s all. She just wants the book, I swear. Just the book, I swear.” Grimmjow lowers him again and Luppi glances towards Kon. “And your brother. But other than that - “

He’s cut off by a scream from outside and they all look towards the window. Luppi takes advantage of the distraction, knees Grimmjow perilously close to somewhere particularly sensitive, and makes a break for the other window, breaking the frame as he jumps out of it. Grimmjow hears the clatter of his landing and he and Kon rush over.

Outside, the crowd has made a space, framing a figure shrouded in black, a body collapsed on the ground in front of it. Not difficult to guess who they are. The shrouded figure bends, picks something off the body, then turns. One of the canopic jars, Grimmjow realizes. And the black book is already tucked under one arm. So much for getting to it first.

As if feeling their attention, the mummy looks up at the window and Grimmjow shivers. She opens her mouth, jaw dropping inhumanly wide, and a black cloud pours out. A second later, the buzzing registers and Grimmjow and Kon scramble to close the shutters before the swarm of flies reaches them. The people outside aren’t so lucky and they can hear screaming as the flies turn on them.

“Well. Two down, two to go,” Grimmjow says.

“Yeah. Then she’ll be coming after Ichigo,” Kon says.

Ichigo, who is in his rooms, protected only by a lock and two guys that Grimmjow doesn’t actually fully trust to keep him safe.

“Come on,” Grimmjow says, grabbing Kon’s arm and heading out.

~*~

They get there just in time.

Yammy’s body is a dry husk on the floor of the foyer, the canopic jar he’d been carrying nowhere in sight, and a trail of sand leads to the locked door of the bedroom.

Grimmjow kicks the doors in, takes in the scene with one look, and yells, “Hey! Get your ugly mug off of him!”

Ichigo - who apparently had decided to take a nap while Grimmjow and Kon were out, wakes up with a gasp and scrambles to try and get away from the mummy.

She turns to Grimmjow and says something in the growling language that Grimmjow assumes is ancient Hollow. It sounds angry, at least. She heads for him, focused, but this time, Grimmjow’s prepared. There had been a flash of white in the foyer as well and, remembering Bucket Hat’s words, he’d scooped the cat up as he went past. Now, he lifts it up. “Look what I got.”

The mummy gasps, recoiling, and the cat does its part by hissing at her, ears back and teeth out, getting an enraged shriek in response. Grimmjow’s starting to become kind of fond of the fluffball.

Another whirlwind of sand and banging shutters later, the mummy is gone. Grimmjow sets the cat down and looks at Ichigo, who had rolled off the opposite side of the bed. “Hey. You alright?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Kon answers before Ichigo can say anything. “That was…” He trails off when Grimmjow turns to look at him, eyebrows up, belatedly realizing that he hadn’t been who Grimmjow was talking to. “Oh.”

Nnoitra comes pounding up the stairs a moment later, bottle of bourbon in hand, and the next five minutes are getting him to calm down, then filling him and Ichigo in on what Grimmjow and Kon discovered from Luppi.

Ichigo seems to take Yammy’s fate in stride, focusing more on the book and what the mummy apparently wants it for. “This makes sense, Dr. Urahara said as much,” he says. Bucket Hat’s name, Grimmjow realizes after a second of confusion. “She wants to resurrect her lost love and she needs the book to do so. And if that’s the case…”

He looks around at them eyes wide and lit with what Grimmjow hopes is a good idea. “We need to go back to the museum.”

Explanation doesn’t come until they’re at the museum, heading up to the second floor, led by Dr. Urahara and Robes.

“Well, according to legend, the black book that the Americans found at Las Noches is supposed to bring people back from the dead,” Ichigo says. “Until now, it was a notion I was unwilling to believe.”

“Believe it. That’s what brought our buddy back to life.”

“Yes, and I’m thinking that if the black book can bring dead people back to life,” Ichigo continues. “Then - “

“Then maybe the gold book can kill her.”

“That’s the myth,” Ichigo says. “Now we just have to find out where the gold book is hidden.”

They reach the second floor and pause, hearing a weird noise from outside. It resolves slowly into chanting and Grimmjow looks at Ichigo, finds Ichigo looking back. Cautious, they go to the window to look outside.

Night has fallen in truth and the crowd that has gathered outside are lit by torches. The chanting is clearer now, but it takes a second for Grimmjow to realize it’s the mummy’s name.

“Rukia. Rukia. Rukia.”

“Last but not least,” Kon says. “My favorite plague - boils and sores.”

“They have become her slaves,” Robes says. “So it has begun, the beginning of the end.”

“Not quite yet it hasn’t,” Ichigo says. “Come on.”

Grimmjow gives one last look out the window, then follows Ichigo back down the hall to the large slab of rock, etched all over with writing that looks like so much chicken scratch to him. He and Robes take up defensive positions while the others examine the rock.

“According to Bembridge scholars, the golden Book of Hyosube is located inside the statue of Oetsu,” Ichigo says.

“That’s where we found the black book,” Nnoitra says. Grimmjow can’t help a small eyeroll - can’t the guy let Ichigo finish what he’s doing?

“Exactly,” Ichigo says.

“Looks like the old boys at Bembridge were mistaken,” Kon says.

“Yes. They mixed the books up. Mixed up where they were buried. So, if the black book is inside the statue of Oetsu, then the golden book must be inside…”

Wood splinters as the crowd outside breaks through the doors and shouting fills the air. Grimmjow steps to the railing, hand on his pistol.

“Come on, Ichigo, faster,” Kon urges.

“Patience is a virtue,” Ichigo says, sing-song.

People stream into the open room below and Grimmjow glances over his shoulder. “Not right now it isn’t.”

Kon glances over the railing and goes pale. “I, uh, I think I’ll go get the car started,” he says and is quick to run away.

“I’ve got it!” Ichigo says. “The golden Book of Hyosube is at Las Noches inside the statue of Hikifune. Take  _ that _ , Bembridge scholars!” He turns away from the rock, beaming fit to burst, and for a second, Grimmjow really,  _ really _ wants to kiss him.

He might’ve done it, too, except there’s still an angry mob heading for the stairs and kissing isn’t very high on the survival priorities at the moment. They follow Kon out to the car, the mob close behind.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Nnoitra shouts, running ahead when the car comes into view. “Get this thing into gear! Let’s get out of here!”

“Hurry up, Ichigo!” Kon calls, reaching over to open the door as they pile in.

Luppi appears in the doorway, sees them, and turns to yell back into the museum. “Rukia! Rukia!”

She appears in the window above - the same window they’d look out of, not ten minutes earlier, and roars. The sounds of the mob shift, coming closer again. Grimmjow stands up, points at Luppi.

“You’re gonna get yours, Luppi! You hear me?” The car starts moving and he grabs onto the back of a seat to keep his balance. “You’re gonna get yours!”

“Oh, like I’ve never heard that before!” Luppi retorts over the sound of the crowd that spills out around him, chasing the car.

They leave the mob behind quickly enough, driving through narrow streets and wide alleys. The city seems almost deserted, though, and it’s eerie as they drive through the usually-crowded market. And then they find out why.

Kon hits the brakes and they all stare ahead, where the car’s headlights illuminate another mob, waiting for them.

There are faint sounds from behind, the mob from the museum catching up, and Grimmjow glances back, looks forward at the new mob. This close, they can see the bumps of boils on the locals’ skin, the way they stare at the car - lights on, but no one is home.

“Fuck this,” Grimmjow says and reaches a leg over to stomp down on Kon’s foot, pressing the gas pedal to the floor. Kon yelps, but his hands tighten on the wheel and then they’re crashing into the mob. “Hang on!”

Some of the people are knocked aside, a couple go under the car, but then they start getting hold of the car, hanging on, trying to climb in, and Grimmjow is doing his best to punch, shove, and kick them off as they careen through the market. Kon somehow keeps from running them straight into any buildings, but for as many people as they get rid of, it seems like two more take their place.

“Hey! Jaegerjacques!” Nnoitra yells and Grimmjow twists, looking for him. “Jaegerjacques!”

The mob’s gotten hold of the American, a person on each arm and another pulling at his torso, and before Grimmjow can act, Kon takes a sharp turn and Nnoitra goes tumbling out of the car.

“Shit,” Grimmjow swears, but they’re moving too fast and he’s got four other people to worry about. They can’t go back.

Kon steers them into a more open area, fruit stands lining the edges of a small plaza, but there’s someone on the hood of the car and the barrels of water come out of nowhere. It’ll take too long to get the car reoriented, Grimmjow realizes, and he reaches for Ichigo. “Out, out, let’s go!”

He snags a torch from one of the mob members, kicks him back into the group, swings the torch at the others. The mob quickly forms up on all sides, trapping them again against the wall of a building, no easy way out.

And then they stop, like pinning the small group down was all they were after, still chanting the mummy’s name. Grimmjow backs up until he can see Ichigo out of the corner of his eye, can hear the others behind him.

The mob parts down the middle and a familiar figure walks through, black robes billowing, skin looking whole and complete. 

“It’s the creature,” Dr. Urahara says. “She’s fully regenerated.” Nnoitra’s lost then, Grimmjow realizes. The mummy has reclaimed all of the canopic jars and their owners with them.

Luppi trails after the mummy and Grimmjow makes a face. He really should have shot him three years ago, he thinks.

“Keetah mi pharos,” the mummy says when she’s close enough. Grimmjow keeps forgetting how short she is, her height eclipsed by the way her power is almost tangible in the air around her. Physically restored, she’s almost pretty, he thinks, if he were into that sort of thing. Short, dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. “Aja nilo, isirian.”

“Come with me, my prince,” Luppi says, apparently having translation duties now. “It is time to make you mine forever.”

Ichigo snorts. “It’s ‘for all eternity,’” he corrects. “Idiot.” Luppi makes a face and Grimmjow is definitely going to kiss Ichigo the first moment they get a chance.

“Koontash dai na,” the mummy continues. “Aja nilo.” She holds a hand out to Ichigo.

“Take my hand and I will spare your friends,” Luppi provides for the rest of them, though really, Grimmjow has a feeling it’s just him. He snorts at the offer, though, since that’s clearly bogus.

“Oh dear,” Ichigo says, soft. “Have you got any bright ideas?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Grimmjow mutters back.

“You better think of something fast, because if she turns me into a mummy, you’re the first one I’m coming after,” Ichigo says and Grimmjow looks at him, because  _ what _ .

Then the idiot is walking out to the mummy - she’s shorter than Ichigo, even, and it’d be so hard to take her seriously if Grimmjow hadn’t been personal witness to her power - and Grimmjow did not agree to this plan. He fumbles for his pistol. “No!”

“Don’t!” Ichigo says, turning back, eyes wide. “She has to take me to Las Noches to perform the ritual.”

A hand curls around Grimmjow’s wrist. “He is right,” Robes says. “Live today, fight tomorrow.”

Grimmjow glances at him, jaw tight, but there’s really not much he can say against that. They need time to figure out how to find the golden book, time to get it, figure out how to use it. If they can get that time by Ichigo playing along with the mummy for a bit… He lowers his pistol. He doesn’t like it, but he’ll go with it.

He looks at the mummy, tips the torch forward like pointing a finger. “I’ll be seeing you again,” he promises. The mummy just smiles and takes Ichigo’s arm, turning to walk away. Ichigo looks back over his shoulder, looking a lot less certain of this plan than he’d sounded and Grimmjow’s teeth grind in frustration.

“Hey, that’s mine!” Kon protests as Luppi steps forward, pulls the key out of his pocket.

“Thank you,” Luppi says.

The mummy says something, loud and commanding, and Grimmjow would bet - well, not money, but at least a hand - on it not being a thank you. Especially when Ichigo shouts, “No! Let go of me!”

Bogus offer, Grimmjow realizes. The mummy had no intent of letting the rest of them live.

“Good bye, my friend,” Luppi says and then flinches away when Grimmjow takes a step towards him.

“Come here, you little - “

Luppi runs into the mob, following Ichigo and the mummy. The mob ignores him, resuming their chanting, and starts moving forward, closing in around their little pocket of safety.

There are too many to fight, even if they were properly armed. But he’s low on bullets, only has his pistols, Robes and Kon probably only have the one gun each and just as limited in their ammunition. The curator is probably not armed at all. The only way out is through the mob, which isn’t an option.

His eyes drop down as he looks around and he pauses. Well. Maybe not the only way out. He throws his torch aside, bends to haul the manhole cover aside. “Come on!”

Kon’s quick to catch on, though he pauses before jumping down. “What about my brother?”

“We’re gonna get him back,” Grimmjow promises. “Go”

Kon drops with a yell and Grimmjow reaches out to grab Robes. “You’re next!”

In front of him, the curator draws a sword - apparently, he came armed after all - and is hacking at the mob like a mad man. Grimmjow waves at him. “Come on! Give me your hand!”

“You go!” Dr. Urahara shouts, not even looking back.

“Come on!”

“Go!”

The mob is closing in faster and Grimmjow isn’t going to die arguing with a madman. He shakes his head and drops down into the sewer below. Above, he can hear the mob and then screaming as the curator is overwhelmed. Kon and Robes are waiting for him in the darkness and the silence is sober as they head down the dark tunnels to find another way out.

~*~

The next morning dawns bright, the eclipse having passed in the night, and Grimmjow directs them outside of the city to the airfield. Spanish music floats across the sand as they trudge up the dune to the umbrella and the man sitting under it.

“Morning, Ikkaku,” Grimmjow calls when they’re close enough. “A word?”

Ikkaku puts down his cup to look at them, eyebrows up. “And what’s your little problem got to do with His Majesty’s Royal Air Corps?”

“Not a damn thing,” Grimmjow says and Ikkaku’s eyebrows climb another inch up.

“Is it dangerous?”

“You probably won’t live through it,” Grimmjow admits.

“By Jove,” Ikkaku says, like Grimmjow has offered him everything he ever wanted on a silver platter. “Do you really think so?”

“Well, everybody else we’ve bumped into has died,” Kon says, pragmatic. “Why not you?”

Ikkaku nods and stands up, looking back to Grimmjow. “What’s the challenge, then?”

Grimmjow shrugs. “Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, and save the world.” And hope no one tells Ichigo that Grimmjow called him a damsel.

Ikkaku laughs. “Well, then! Madarame Ikkaku at your service!”

It takes surprisingly little to get everything ready to go from there. The prop plane gets dusted off, topped off, and Grimmjow spends five minutes shouting Kon and Robes into submission about being strapped to the wings of the plane while he gets the second seat to man the gun, but then everyone’s got goggles and they’re launching into the sky.

Flying is definitely a lot faster than camel and they make good time heading out over the dunes. Halfway there, he leans over to check on their ballasts. “Doing all right?” he shouts to Kon.

“Do I bloody look all right?!” is the incensed response, which Grimmjow takes to mean he’s doing fine.

Robes doesn’t answer when Grimmjow asks him, which he figures amounts to the same thing.

They’re almost to Las Noches when they pass a giant twister of sand and dirt. “See that?” Ikkaku yells, pointing at it. “I’ve never seen one so big!”

“Never?” Grimmjow asks.

“No!”

They keep flying, but Grimmjow keeps an eye on the twister until suddenly it vanishes. Ikkaku swings the plane wide as they get close to Las Noches, looking for a good place to set down. And then the sand under them starts to stir and rise and that’s definitely not a good sign.

“Oh my god,” Grimmjow says as the sand forms a wall of solid brown. “Ikkaku! Pedal faster!”

“Hold on!” Ikkaku shouts and then he’s laughing maniacally as they take a nosedive over the edge of a cliff, practically in freefall towards the ground. They pull out of it at the last minute and Grimmjow scrambles to get his hands on the gun, eyes wide and fixed on the wall of sand following them. Power over the sands, he remembers. This is the mummy’s doing.

A face forms in the middle of the wall of sand like a giant mask, mouth opening as if it intends to swallow their small plane. Grimmjow yells and aims, firing at it. He can see the effects, the bullets making pockmarks on the face, but they do nothing else besides making him feel better about doing  _ something _ .

Then the sand speeds up more and the face swallows them down, surrounding them with stinging sand. With visibility gone to shit, Ikkaku is struggling to keep the plane level and in the air. At one point, they flip over, flying upside down, and Ikkaku cries out, “Here I come, laddies!”

A moment later, the sand just...stops, falling back down to earth, leaving them flying in clear air. Grimmjow whoops, only for the engine to make a really terrible sputtering sound. Then it catches on fire and they’re making a beeline for the sand.

They crash, shouting, in a plume of sand and it’s all Grimmjow can do to hold on and try to survive. When the dust settles, he feels like he’s been knocked around the inside of a tin can - not inaccurate - and he’s staring up at the cloudless sky. He groans, pulls himself out of the plane, turns to check on the others. Robes has freed himself, staggering a little as he finds his legs again.

“Excuse me?”

Kon, however, is hanging mostly upside down from where his wing got lodged in the ground. Grimmjow grins at that, contemplates leaving him to hang for a bit longer. 

“Um. A little help would be...be useful, if it’s  _ not too much trouble _ !”

Yeah, he can wait a few more minutes, Grimmjow decides. He casts around for his kit, finds it ten feet away. Everything seems mostly intact, so he zips it up again, hauls it onto his back, ignoring Kon’s increasingly louder demands to be untied.

Robes detaches the machine gun from the post on the plane, which Grimmjow approves of. They’ll probably want the extra firepower.

“Mr. Jaegerjacques!” Kon howls and Grimmjow rolls his eyes, but goes to let him down, biting back a laugh when Kon loses his feet completely as soon as he’s upright again.

Ikkaku hasn’t moved, so Grimmjow goes to check on him. “Ikkaku! Hey, Ikkaku!” There’s no response and, as he moves to look at Ikkaku’s face, it’s pretty clear why. “Damn,” Grimmjow says, soft.

Even knowing there was a decent chance of it happening, it’s still hard. Grimmjow takes a moment, then gets up, gathers up his kit. Kon’s gone quiet and when Grimmjow looks at him, he has an uncharacteristically somber expression. Robes joins them and Grimmjow shoulders his bag. They turn to look at Ikkaku one last time and Grimmjow sketches a salute. In the corner of his eye, he sees Kon doing the same.

Well, that confirms that, then.

Then they turn towards Las Noches and Ichigo. Time to rescue their damsel.

~*~

“Right,” Kon says when they get to the ruins. “The statue of Hikifune should be opposite the statue of Oetsu. And if Oetsu is over there…” He points across the ruins, then turns, pointing in the opposite direction. “Then Hikifune should be over there.”

Grimmjow doesn’t have anything better to go off of, so he shrugs and heads that direction. Finding a way down into the complex isn’t so hard, but this section isn’t as well-preserved. They work their way through corridors piled with sand and broken walls until they reach a section that’s been almost completely blocked by a rockfall.There aren’t any handy shortcuts around it, either, so Grimmjow looks at Robes and they get to work.

Kon, of course, stands back and watches them.

“I’d take those bigger stones first,” he says over the sound of rocks tumbling against each other. “Take them from the top, otherwise the whole thing will cave in on us. Come on, put your backs into it.”

Grimmjow grinds his teeth and both he and Robes turn to look at Kon. He’s sure that Robes has the same expression of exasperation on his face, because Kon quickly back-pedals.

“Yes, well, you’ve got the idea. Chop chop,” Kon says, flapping a hand at them. Grimmjow rolls his eyes and goes back to work.

They’ve gotten the pile down to something they might almost be able to climb over when Kon speaks up again, but Grimmjow tunes him out, more focused on accomplishing their mission in time to prevent Ichigo from being sacrificed. He doesn’t have time for every little thing that Kon gets distracted by.

Then Kon starts screaming.

Grimmjow drops his rock, turning. “What?” he asks, sharp. Kon might be dramatic, but Grimmjow hasn’t known him to scream over nothing.

Kon doesn’t answer, arm held out and making high-pitched panicked noises. After a moment the noises resolve into words. “It’s in my arm! My arm!”

He’s pulling at the sleeve of his shirt and Grimmjow bats his hands aside, grabs the shirt and practically rips it off Kon’s shoulder. There’s a lump on Kon’s bicep, a  _ moving _ lump. “Whoa!”

“Do something!” Kon shrieks and Grimmjow has to think fast. No time to spare; whatever the thing is, there are only two places it’s likely to be heading and neither of them are good.

“Hold him!” Grimmjow says, pushing Kon at Robes, who obligingly holds Kon still. Grimmjow reaches for his belt, flips out his pocket knife, spins it into the right grip.

“Do something! Do something!” Kon pleads, right up until he sees the knife coming at him. “Not that! Not that!”

Grimmjow ignores him, stabs the moving bulge through Kon’s skin, levers it out of Kon’s shoulder and lobs it through the air. There’s a brief impression of dark plating and waving legs and then they’re all staring at a very much alive scarab that flips itself upright, makes a weird buzzing noise, and starts running right back at them.

A knife isn’t going to do much good, so Grimmjow pulls out his pistol. Fires. Checks that the bug is nothing more than a smoking hole in the sand.

“Right,” he says after a moment of silence. “Let’s get moving. They’ll know we’re here, now.”

They take just long enough to wind makeshift bandages around Kon’s hand and shoulder, then they’re over the rockfall and moving. At one point, they have to squeeze through what was clearly not supposed to be a passage, but seems to go in the right direction. Grimmjow shuffles through, torch and bag held out in front of him.

He hops down into the sand on the other side, looking out into the dark. It must be a pretty big chamber, he thinks. In the distance, something glints with reflected light and when Grimmjow looks harder, it resolves into a mirror.

Ancient Hollow trick, he remembers. He pulls out his pistol.

Behind him, Kon and Robes join him, but Grimmjow’s focused on aiming. He needs to hit the mirror just right…

The bullet pings off of the metal and the mirror creaks as it tilts with the impact, light reflected down to -

Gold. 

Mirrors light up across an enormous chamber, absolutely packed with statues and boxes and piles that glint in the light, and Grimmjow blinks. He hadn’t been expecting that.

They take a moment to just look, taking in how the room just goes on and on, fading into the distance before they can see any sign of the far wall. Kon makes soft, disbelieving noises and even Robes seems awestruck.

Grimmjow holsters his pistol, swings his shotgun back into a ready carry, starts down the stairs into the room. Some of the pieces of treasure seem to be laid out purposefully, making paths through the room, but behind the statues of guards and sphinxes, coins and cups and trinkets are piled haphazardly, like some ancient king had carelessly dropped them there.

“Can you see - “ Kon starts.

“Yeah.” Grimmjow says.

“Can you believe - “

“Yeah.”

“Can we just - “

“No.”

Halfway through the room, there’s a weird, squeaky noise from behind them. They turn to look and a hand - dried, desiccated,  _ mummified _ , Grimmjow realizes - thrusts through the sand. A moment later, it’s followed by an actual mummy. And then another one. And another one.

“Who the hell are these guys?” Grimmjow asks, shotgun at the ready.

“Priests,” Robes says. “Rukia’s priests.”

Which means they’re fair game. “All right then.”

He opens fire. Just because the one mummy is invulnerable to modern weapons, doesn’t mean all of them are. Robes seems to be of a similar mind, since he’s firing away, too.

Kon reaches over, pulls Grimmjow’s pistols out of his holsters. Grimmjow allows it, remembers a steady hand against bad odds and the salute earlier.

Bullets are definitely doing harm to the mummies, but after a moment, it’s clear that they’re not doing  _ enough _ damage. That, and the mummies seem to be multiplying. Grimmjow grabs for both Kon and Robes, hauls them back. “Come on!” he shouts.

A last few shots, then they’re running through an ancient treasure horde, trying to find the way out, pursued by mummies.

Grimmjow thinks that maybe, after this, he’ll settle down. No more adventures. Some peace and quiet sounds nice after all this.

The mummies prove to be surprisingly persistent as they wind their way through passages. Grimmjow is popping off shots when he gets the chance, trying to keep them back, when he hears Kon exclaim.

“There he is!” Kon shouts. “Hello, Hikifune, old gal!”

Grimmjow hands off the shotgun to Robes, digs one-handed in his bag for a stick of dynamite. He drags a match against Robe’s jaw - none of them have had much chance to shave the last couple of days - and lights the fuse. “Time to close the door,” he says, chucking the dynamite through the doorway they’d just come through.

They duck behind the statue to avoid the debris, but once the cries die down, the impromptu solution seems to have worked. No further mummies try to get in through the blocked passage.

“Let’s get to work,” Grimmjow says. “The book’s in a secret hole or something, right?”

“Yeah, at the foot of Hikifune.”

Grimmjow glances up at the bird-headed statue. “Well, let’s hope this is the right one, then.”

It’s easy enough to figure out where the secret compartment is. Grimmjow bangs at the corners of the panel, loosening it a bit, then the and Kon bend to the task of trying to pry it out without a crowbar or any other tools. Robes stands watch with Grimmjow’s shotgun.

They’ve managed a bit of wiggle room when the squeaky shrieking starts up again, this time from a different direction. Grimmjow glances at the far door. “Damn. These guys just don’t quit, do they?”

“Keep digging,” Robes says, priming the shotgun and heading for the door.

With the extra motivation to get the damn thing open, Grimmjow and Kon redouble their efforts until finally the damn thing pops free in a cloud of dust and stale air. Grimmjow coughs, waving at the air.

“I hate that,” he mutters.

Kon pulls his shirt up over his mouth and leans in to pull out a plain, wooden box as Grimmjow hauls the heavy panel to one side. The lid is off the box when Grimmjow turns back and he and Kon pull at the fabric wrapped object until gold glints in the torchlight.

“The Book of Oetsu,” Kon says, looking at Grimmjow.

Grimmjow nods, glancing down at the book. It’s about the same size as the Book of the Dead, with the same eight-point star lock on the front.

“At least something is going right,” he says.

Shotgun blasts from the doorway get their attention and Robes comes back into view, mummies filling the doorway. The shotgun clicks, out of bullets, and he looks over his shoulder at them. “Save the boy. Kill the creature.”

Grimmjow opens his mouth, but doesn’t get the chance to protest before the guy is running into the mob of mummies, wielding the shotgun like a stave. He shakes his head a little, reaches for another stick of dynamite as Kon grabs the book.

“What are you waiting for?” Robes shouts from the doorway, almost buried in mummies. “Get out! Get out!”

Grimmjow’s not going to stick around to argue the point. He throws Kon into one recess, tosses the lit stick of dynamite into the other, flinching a little when it goes off.

“You all right?” he asks Kon, quick. As soon as Kon nods, he grabs him again, scrambling for the hole he’s just made in the wall. “Let’s go.”

~*~

The chanting of the priests rises in pitch and pace and Ichigo turns his head, eyes wide when he sees the dark waters stir and lift. It’s not actually water, he realizes when it winds through the air towards the mummy laid out next to him. The soul of Shiba Kaien.

It flows over him and settles into the mummy’s form and as soon as it does, the mummy shrieks and seizes as he tries to take a breath. He turns to look at Ichigo, still shrieking, and Ichigo shrieks right back at him, struggling against the shackles that chain him to the altar.

He turns to find Rukia standing over him, a knife held in two hands, raised above Ichigo’s chest. “With your death, Shiba Kaien shall live,” Rukia says. “And I shall be invincible!”

She lifts the knife a little higher, clearly prepared to drive it down into Ichigo, when Kon’s voice breaks through the constant chanting.

“Ichigo! The Book of Oetsu!” Kon shouts and Ichigo turns his head to see him on the stairs, holding something up in the air. The book, the golden Book of Oetsu. They really did it. “I found it, Ichigo! I found it!”

“The Book of Oetsu,” Rukia murmurs, lowering the knife, eyes fixed on Kon.

“Shut up and get me off here, Kon!” he shouts. He’s not particularly worried about letting on about their plan, since the mummies have seemed to understand only ancient Hollow and Luppi’s slipped off somewhere. “Open the book! It’s the only way to kill him. You have to open the book and find the inscription!”

Rukia steps around the altar, setting down the knife and heading for the stairs. Then again, maybe she doesn’t need to understand modern English to know that the golden book is her only weakness right now.

“Well, I can’t open it! It’s locked or something,” Kon shouts. “We need the key, Ichigo!”

“It’s inside her robes!” Ichigo says, because that much he knows. Rukia reaches the bottom of the steps and Kon finally seems to notice, disappearing somewhere.

Before Rukia can give chase in earnest, though, Jaegerjacques comes from the other direction, swinging a sword down at the altar and shearing through one of the manacles. Rukia turns back, says something that Ichigo doesn’t quite catch, but the priests rise up from their circle, moving as one towards Jaegerjacques.

The sword proves to be effective against mummies as well as chains and Ichigo watches with wide eyes as Jaegerjacques slashes and kicks and, once, bats a mummy’s head with the flat of his blade, clearing the area around the altar. He even manages to sever the chains holding Ichigo’s feet, but there’s still a second chain holding Ichigo’s left wrist.

Ichigo does his best to help, grabbing one of the canopic jars to throw into the face of one mummy that gets too close, but it feels like very little when it’s all he can manage. It only takes a few minutes before the mummies are all dispatched, though.

“Mummies,” Jaegerjacques says dismissively when he comes to a stop, sword braced over one shoulder, grinning down at Ichigo. Then, as he starts to swing the sword for the last chain, he yelps and drops to the ground and Ichigo twists, trying to see what happened.

A mummy happened, it turns out, hands wrapped around Jaegerjacques’ ankle, pulling at him. Another appears, grabbing at Jaegerjacques’ shoulders, holding him down and Ichigo shouts, trying to warn him. “Look out, there’s one down - “ He catches sight of yet another mummy carrying a slab of rock. “Grimmjow!”

Jaegerjacques twists, sees the approaching mummy, and struggles harder, trying to reach the sword that must have dropped when he got pulled down. It’s just out of his reach. Ichigo tugs at the last manacle, but it holds fast and there’s no way he’d be able to reach anything from where he is. So he’s stuck watching as the mummy gets closer and closer to dropping what is surely a very heavy rock onto Jaegerjacques.

He doesn’t exactly see what happens next, just the sudden swing of the sword and the mummy falling backwards to be crushed under the slab itself, but then Jaegerjacques is fighting the mummies off and climbing to his feet, disheveled and panting, but alive.

The last chain is easily dealt with and Jaegerjacques is helping Ichigo off of the altar, when Kon’s voice echoes through the chamber.

“Here’s an inscription!” he calls. “Rasheem - rasheem oola - rasheem oola kashka!”

Doors to the sides of the room open up and yet more mummies file through, though these ones are armed with shields and spears. The god-king’s guard, Ichigo realizes, seeing the emblem of Hikifune engraved on the shields. They file out, turn to face Ichigo and Jaegerjacques, and start advancing, weapons lifted.

“Oh yeah,” Jaegerjacques says, lifting his own sword. “This just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

Ichigo glances sideways to where Kon’s standing, book in hand. “Do something, Kon.”

“Me?” Kon asks, looking mildly panicked. “What can I do?”

“You can command them,” Ichigo hisses, watching the guards out of the corner of his eye.

“You have got to be joking,” Kon says and he’s definitely starting to panic. Ichigo rolls his eyes. Honestly.

“Finish the inscription on the cover, idiot,” he says. “ _ Then _ you can control them.”

“Oh. Right.” Kon ducks behind a pillar, hopefully to figure out the rest of the inscription.

Something grabs Ichigo’s shoulder, spinning him around, and he yells, hands coming up, stumbling back as a knife slices through the space he’d just been in. Shiba Kaien, he realizes, getting a better look before he’s being attacked again.

Over Shiba Kaien’s shoulder, he can see Jaegerjacques turn to help him, but then Rukia shouts something and some of the guards jump forward. Ichigo hears Jaegerjacques yell, hears the mummies roar back much louder and deeper, but then he has to focus on staying out of the reach of Shiba Kaien’s knife.

He runs, ducking behind pillars and sarcophagi, head on a swivel to try and keep watch for Shiba Kaien closing in. “Hurry up, Kon!” he shouts, ducking a swipe of the blade.

“I can’t figure out this last symbol!” Kon shouts back.

“What does it look like?” Ichigo rounds the corner on a sarcophagus - there are some interesting inscriptions, he’d love for a closer look, but he has a feeling he won’t be getting the chance.

“It’s a, uh, a bird - a stork!”

A bird character, the stork, it’s an easy one, he knows this -

Shiba Kaien finds him, shrieking in Ichigo’s face, knife raised and other hand shooting out to wrap around Ichigo’s throat. Ichigo yells, scrabbling at the mummy’s grip and doing his best to simultaneously keep the blade away from his skin.

“A-Ahmenophus!” Ichigo manages, eyes fixed on the point of the knife, scant inches from his face. He’s pushed to the side , free of Shiba Kaien’s grip but also now wide open for another attack.

“Uh, Hootash im Ahmenophus!” Kon yells and everything goes still for a second. Ichigo stumbles out into the central area, looking for Jaegerjacques, finds him scrambling off the bridge at the base of the stairs as the guards line up in a ready position, awaiting orders.

“Destroy him!” Rukia shouts from somewhere, but the guards don’t respond. “I command you to destroy him!”

Quick footsteps are all the warning Ichigo gets and he ducks to the side to evade another attack from Shiba Kaien, the knife scraping horribly against stone.

“Fa-Kooshka Shiba Kaien!” Kon shouts and Ichigo has never been more proud that those lessons in ancient Hollow have paid off for something that isn’t treasure hunting.

“Shiba Kaien!” Rukia shouts as the guards turn and advance towards Ichigo and Shiba Kaien.

The mummy stops, turns to see his approaching doom, and gasps, backing away. “Rukia!” he screams as the first guard reaches him, spear slicing easily through the linen wrappings and the undead flesh underneath. Then the other guards reach them and Ichigo watches with wide eyes and Shiba Kaien is cut down, the bandaged form going still under the relentless attack of blades and speartips.

Ichigo turns away, slipping out and away, looking around for Kon.

“Ichigo! I’ve got it!” Kon yells and Ichigo turns, hurries over to him to grab for the book and the key.

“Keep her busy!” Ichigo yells across the room to Jaegerjacques, who has somehow drawn Rukia’s ire. It’s almost comical, the short mummy throwing the much taller human around.

“No problem,” Jaegerjacques grunts as he’s thrown against a pillar.

“Hurry, Ichigo. Hurry!” Kon urges, head turned to watch the fight behind Ichigo.

Ichgio turns one of the heavy leaves, scanning the hieroglyphs desperately. “You’re not helping!”

To the side, Jaegerjacques is lifted into the air, feet inches off the ground, and Ichigo redoubles his efforts. It pays off when he flips the page again, finding the inscription along the top.

“Oh! I’ve got it!” he shouts, finger on the glyphs. “Kadeesh mal. Kadeesh mal. Pared oos. Pared oos.”

Jaegerjacques is dropped to the sand, where he coughs weakly, Rukia distracted by the appearance of an unmanned chariot at the top of the stairs, pulled by two horses and glowing an eerie, spectral blue. She screams as it starts rolling down towards her and then it’s passing  _ through _ her. The chariot wheels and heads for the stairs again, but now there’s a ghostly copy of Rukia in the chariot, being dragged along.

Rukia runs after it, hands reaching out, grasping as if she could pull the spirit form back, but the chariot disappears into a portal of some kind and is lost.

Jaegerjacques finds his feet, stumbling over to Ichigo and Kon, picking up his sword as he goes. He holds it up between them and Rukia, who has turned around to focus on them.

“I thought you said it was gonna kill him!” Jaegerjacques says, watching Rukia getting closer. 

He lowers the point of the sword and, when Rukia gets close enough, pushes it through her abdomen. Rukia blinks, looks down at the sword, her hand coming up to touch it and coming away bloody.

“She’s mortal,” Ichigo says

Jaegerjacques pushes, making Rukia stumble back, off the blade, both hands clutching at the mortal wound. She seems in shock as she steps away, down into the water to one side. The water roils around her, forming hands that grasp at her, pulling her down.

If Ichigo needed any more evidence that it isn’t normal water, this would do it.

Rukia sinks down slowly, her skin dissolving as it touches the water, losing the appearance of life and reverting to the mummified look they’d first seen when they opened her sarcophagus. As the water rises up around her neck, she looks up at Ichigo and says something in ancient Hollow.

Then she’s gone, the mummified remains sinking below the waters and out of sight.

“Death is only the beginning,” Ichigo translates, soft. The same words that had been etched into the lid of the sarcophagus. Hardly the most reassuring of final words.

They only have a moment to relax and realize that they’ve won, they’ve defeated the creature that Ichigo had accidentally awoken. Then the ceiling starts to descend and sand and debris fall around them, followed by chunks of stone and sculpture as things impact and compress.

“Time to go!” Jaegerjacques shouts, grabbing at Ichigo. They head up the stairs, Kon behind them, and Ichigo glances back just in time to see Kon trip and stumble on the bridge, the golden book in his hands sliding out and into the dark waters. Ichigo gasps, pulling out of Jaegerjacques’ hold to run back, staring down as if he could somehow will the book back to the surface.

“You’ve lost the book?! Kon, I can’t believe - “

Hands on both his arms as Kon and Jaegerjacques both haul him forward. “Come on!”

They take a different route back to the surface and Ichigo gasps as they run into an enormous hall full of treasure. But he’s never cared as much for gold as he does for knowledge and it’s easy enough to accept the pang of sorrow at losing so much wealth.

Kon, however, has much stronger feelings about treasure and this time he’s the one to stop, hands gesturing uselessly at the fortune around them. “Couldn’t we just - ?”

“No, Kon!” Ichigo says as he and Jaegerjacques grab a hand each, hauling Ichigo’s brother with them towards the exit.

“Jaegerjacques!” someone yells from behind them. Ichigo glances back, recognizing Luppi’s voice. “Jaegerjacques, wait!”

Kon hauls at Ichigo as Jaegerjacques hangs back, reaching to try and pull Luppi through a closing doorway. “Come on, come on!”

They keep running and a moment later, Jaegerjacques catches up alone. Ichigo can’t quite bring himself to regret the loss of another life; Luppi had hardly endeared himself to any of them.

They stumble through the final doorway and out into sun and sand, but the collapse is clearly impacting the surrounding geography.

“Look out, look out!” Jaegerjacques yells, pulling Ichigo sideways out of the way of a falling pillar.

Sand falls beneath their feet, ancient construction pulling itself apart and spilling every which way as they run through the ruins and out into the desert beyond. There are camels out here and they make a beeline for them. Thankfully, the destruction seems limited to the bounds of Las Noches itself, the desert untouched.

At a safe enough distance, they stop, turning to watch the plumes of sand and dirt as Las Noches implodes on itself. The stories were right, Ichigo thinks. A whole complex rigged to sink into the sand as a last measure to protect the wealth stored within.

Kon shrieks all of a sudden and Ichigo and Jaegerjacques yell in response, all of them twisting to see what new horror has appeared.

It turns out to be the nomad, perched on top of a camel, looking oddly unruffled for all the excitement that’s happened. Ichigo wonders if he helped Kon and Jaegerjacques - Grimmjow, Ichigo thinks. He can probably called the man by his first name, now, given everything that’s happened.

“Oh! Thank you! Thank you very much!” Kon exclaims, hand over his heart like he’s trying to keep it in place.

“You’ve earned the respect and gratitude of me and my people,” the nomad says. Ichigo regrets a little that he doesn’t even know the guy’s name.

“Yes, well, it was nothing,” Kon says, waving the gratitude away. The nomad doesn’t seem offended, at least, so Ichigo doesn’t intervene.

“May the King smile upon you always,” the nomad continues, fingertips touching his lips, his forehead, out to them. 

Kon sketches something that approximates a Catholic cross if one were to squint from a distance. “And...yourself.”

The nomad nods to them - Ichigo smiles back - and turns his camel, riding off into the distance.

“Stay out of trouble,” Grimmjow calls after him and Ichigo laughs a little. He has a feeling that the nomad is not the one who needs that advice.

Kon watches the nomad go. “He’s just...leaving us here,” he says, sounding faintly disgusted. “Well, I guess we go home empty-handed. Again.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Grimmjow says, low, and Ichigo glances at him, finds Grimmjow looking at him and he flushes a little when he realizes why.

Then Grimmjow is leaning in and oh. Oh. Ichigo kisses back, a little surprised at how soft it is, but it’s...it’s really good. So much better than that first, hard kiss at the prison.

“Oh, please,” Kon mutters, rolling his eyes and turning away.

Ichigo ignores him, reaching up to pull Grimmjow a little closer, tilts his head a little more into the kiss. They’ll mount up and ride off soon enough, back to Seireitei and their lives and the chaos that this whole ordeal has created, but for just this moment, Ichigo doesn’t care about any of it.

All’s well that ends well, after all.


End file.
